Fever Ray
by kismet-wayfinder
Summary: With the waxing of the full moon, a werewolf comes. Except it's just a story, Hermione would be happy to say. But when things become revealed bit by bit, she finds herself unsure at best. Harry/Hermione : Neville/Luna
1. Chapter 1

**I don't own Harry Potter. Unless you count the actual books. I own a few copies of **_**those**_**.  
><strong>_A/N: This is set in an Alternate Universe. If you're not into that, it goes w/o saying that this probably isn't your thing. But anywho, to those who do give it a gander - thank you kindly!  
>AN again: Basically, I decided "Hey, what if the HP characters were thrown into the film __Red Riding Hood__. And I had a double shot of espresso. Here we are. If that didn't scare you away, then, once more thank you for reading! Tis always appreciated!  
><em>

* * *

><p>Why she'd run into the forest, she had no idea.<p>

Not for nothing, but it was the normal order of business for the village of Horthwarg and its people to shut down upon hearing the sound of a wolf howling in the woods during the season where the moon in the night sky would wax full. But Hermione Granger, daughter of the local apothecary, had not heard merely a howl, but a scream as well. Having all happened as she was standing near the edge of the woods, while picking the last of the berries that evening to take back home for the medicinal material stock, she could hardly bring herself to simply run for cover in her home after hearing a cry for help from within the trees, and so she'd done just that, abandoning the berries to investigate what had happened within the depths of the trees.

Heroics aside, she couldn't help but feel a strong desire to turn and run in the other direction now, as she pushed by and through any number of crowded trees, scraping leg and arm on branches in the darkness of the night, when not nearly tripping over large tree roots.

"Stupid. I'm _stupid_ for doing this. What am I doing here?" she said to herself in a breathless voice, hearing another scream, followed by a second how. "_Stupid_."

Feeling quite winded by the time she reached the source of the noise, the girl with a fair complexion stopped dead in her tracks upon laying eyes on the sight that met them. A girl she knew fairly well - though not well enough to neccesarily call a friend - was lying on the forest floor. A wolf had pounced atop her, and was actively mauling her. It was a bloody, gory mess - even in the only moon lit darkness, one could easily tell it - and Hermione used a mix of overwhelming willpower and adrenaline both to snap herself from the shock that came with the sight of it all.

"Get off her!" she shouted, quickly reaching down to the ground to pick up a rather large rock as she did so.

The wolf, startled by her shout, turned from its current victim, staring back at Hermione now instead, looking ready to pounce her. Quickly hurling the rock forward, striking the animal once on the head, she took the seconds that the action bought her to reach down for two more rocks, before moving in a bit closer, and then hurling them both in quick succession toward the animal. Striking it in just the right area from a closer range, it was soon down for the count. Whether actually dead or merely unconscious, Hermione couldn't be sure, but she felt that it whatever it was happened to be enough to satisfy her sense for need of personal safety.

"Lavender, are you going to be alright?" she asked in a shaky voice, before clearing her throat as she hurriedly made her way to the attacked girl's side.

Kneeling next to her, she placed a hand against the girl's bosom, which was only rising and falling in a very shallow way; she felt a strong enough heartbeat, but the rest of the blonde-haired girl looked much worse for the wear. "Come on," Hermione said to her, slowly standing as she put a hand at the girl's side, grasping onto her arm with her other hand. "Let's get you to my house. My father probably has polstices enough to help you."

"I don't know if I can get up, Hermione," the girl murmured, her voice slurring slightly as she widened her eyes; she seemed to be caught within a state of shock her own self.

"Oh, yes you do. And you can. And you _will_," Hermione answered her, tugging at her arm until the girl did indeed begin to move to get to her feet. "I know it won't be easy, but who knows when this wolf might wake up and attack again? That'd be the end of us both, Lavender."

Slowly and shakily making it to a standing position, the buxom girl swayed slightly on her feet, before gaining a more steady composure. Allowing Hermione to help guide her forward with her hands on her arm and side, respectively, Lavender paused a few steps away to look back at the wolf that had attacked her. Staring blankly for a millisecond, she then gave a quiet gasp, before shaking her head from side to side, slowly. "But where did it go...?"

"What?" Hermione said, rather blankly, before turning to look for her own self. The wolf was gone.

She hadn't heard it get up or walk away or howl, or any other such thing it would be likely to do, yet it was gone - completely disappeared from where she'd left it. "Let's just hurry back to the village, Lavender..."

"I'm trying," the girl said, indeed doing her best to walk in a faster pace as Hermione continued to help guide her and keep her steady. "Do you really think your father can help me?"

"He can mix up a potion for anything."

"Even werewolf attacks...?" Lavender asked uncertainly, her breathing growing a bit more labored.

"Werewolf attacks? Don't be silly. That was just a regular old wolf. It was a _dangerous_, regular old wolf, but all the same-"

"_By the face of the waxing moon - in the light it doth shine - the wolf that is man will stagger and swoon - transfixed by the light and heart filled with evil divine_," Lavender recited, recollecting a poem that she'd first learned as a much younger girl.

"The wolf that is man - right. There is no such thing. Don't worry. Not for nothing, but you're bad off enough as it is without making up pointless things to worry yourself with at the moment. Please try to relax - it will help," Hermione said to her, in a matter-of-fact way, shaking her head.

"Have you ever seen one? A werewolf, that is?"

When Hermione remained silent, apparently too convinced there was no such thing to even answer the question, Lavender went on to say, "Well there you go. You personally wouldn't know if what had me down on the ground was a werewolf or not. If you haven't ever seen one, you wouldn't _know_."

Shaking her head further still, Hermione kept quiet, deciding to simply continue to help the girl on back to the village. As far as she was concerned, if Lavender wasn't willing to drop this silly talk, then the pair of teenagers really had nothing to talk about at all. _Werewolves_ - of all the crazy talk in the world.

* * *

><p>"Tomorrow when we have time, do you think we should practice brewing our potions before our next lesson?" Sat upon a large stone outside of the home he shared with his friend and his friend's family, a sixteen year old with dark hair and green eyes glanced over uncertainly in the direction of who he was asking the question to. He wasn't particularly fond of doing lessons outside of actual lesson time itself, but their last potion brewing lesson with the apothecary's apprentice had been troubling at best, and wanted to hear his friend's input on the manner.<p>

"Is there any real point in practicing it without Hermione here to tell us what we're doing wrong? I'm pretty sure she has something planned with my sister tomorrow. She probably wouldn't be available to help us." Standing with his back leant against a side of the aforementioned home, a taller, gangly sixteen year old with a freckled complexion and ginger hair gave a sigh upon answering what he'd been asked. "Honestly, Harry – do you think we could get past the first few steps without her help?"

"_Probably not_," the now perturbed-looking young man said as he scratched at the stubble on his chin, before shaking his head and moving to stand up, stretching as he did so. "But if we did practice more often, then we might not be so lost all the time, you know, Ron."

"Eh, she'll lecture us both enough later on," the redhead answered lazily.

Looking vaguely puzzled, Harry raised an eyebrow, saying to his friend, "Maybe I'm imagining things, but I'd have sworn you were starting to really take a liking to her after all this time."

Glancing away, Ron answered, "Just because I dislike her lectures doesn't mean I dislike _her_. Besides, did you see what happened last week, when the bottle of whiskey was knocked over and started a fire near the haystack while we brewed polstices? When I put it out, she practically had _stars_ in her eyes looking back to me, like I was a hero or something."

"You're something, alright," Harry said.

"Oh whatever - I know what I saw, and it was admiration. She really likes me."

"If you're so certain, let her know then," Harry answered simply, before smirking in an amused fashion as he watched his friend go a bit red in the ears.

"Why don't _you_ go telling her things like that, and in class no less," Ron said, a sour look on his face. He'd then begun to say something else when an outcry coming from the edges of the nearby woods caught his and Harry's attention at once.

"Who's out at this time of night?" the ginger said immediately, before heading onward for the forest edge with Harry.

The light of the moon providing guidance, they soon found the source of the sound. Startled, they watched as their friend struggled to exit from the last of the trees, bearing some of the weight of another village girl as she approached them.

"Can you help me?" she asked, gasping for a breath as both of the young men came to her aid; Ron, reaching the girls first, took Lavender from Hermione completely, lifting her up in his arms to carry her the rest of the way on into the village, while Harry was left to place a hand at Hermione's shoulder, while he asked her several questions, wanting to gather what had led to this occurrence.

"Why were you and Lavender in the _woods at night_?" was his first question, and when Hermione didn't answer right away, he moved on to, "It was a really dangerous thing to do. You do realize that, don't you?" And finally, shaking his head as he walked with her back toward the houses, following quickly after Ron and Lavender, he asked her, "Are you out of your mind?"

Finally deciding to answer, the brown-eyed young woman took a deep breath to calm herself down, and then answered, "I heard her scream – I went to see what was wrong. Of course I know it was dangerous, Harry. And, lastly, yes, I probably am."

"Oh really? You probably are, you say?"

"Yes," Hermione said simply, giving a curt nod as she did so. "After all, once I hit the wolf with enough rocks to take it down – and once I had gotten poor Lavender to her feet, as well – well, I looked back and the wolf was _gone_. I've been deduced to imagining things, Harry."

Both feeling and looking alarmed, Harry stopped in his tracks, grabbing hold of Hermione's wrist as he did so. "You do realize the werewolf comes out during the waxing of the moon, don't you?"

Gently removing her wrist from his grasp, Hermione replied, "Maybe I'm not the only one out of their mind. Now enough of this – we need to help Lavender. We have to wake my father. We should probably go and wake Apprentice Snape, as well."

* * *

><p>"Are you quite sure your father isn't good enough to help Lavender on his own?"<p>

Ron asked this question of Hermione in a whisper as he huddled with both her and Harry on the opposite side of the one-room cabin that the apothecary and his daughter lived in.

On a bed by the biggest window lay the shivering, bloodied body of Lavender. The apothecary was moving like clockwork, mixing polstices to aid her in any way possible. After applying ointments to afflicted areas, he would then proceed to bandage them up, before moving on to more afflictions. All in all, he'd been working to keep her alive for the past forty minutes straight, not pausing to take so much as a half-moment's breather. Upon first entering into the cabin and laying the injured girl down upon the table, Ron had quickly done as instructed to do so by the apothecary, and had gone to alert Lavender's family about what had happened to her. While he'd told them that she'd been attacked, he left out much of the details. Who needed a panicked family coming to disturb the apothecary as he worked, after all?

Afterward, when Ron had returned with Lavender's parents, only to be told to escort them right back to their cabin after they caught a glimpse of their daughter and went into a hysterical panic, the apothecary had sent his own daughter to fetch his apprentice to help, as well.

As it was now, Hermione had returned, and she and her two friends were awaiting his appearance at any moment, to aid with the help being given to Lavender. "I know he's hard on us when we do lessons with him," Hermione was saying to Ron and Harry. "I understand that he isn't pleasant. But he's a superb apothecary, even if only an apprentice at the moment."

"Yeah, well, calling Snape unpleasant is practically a _compliment_, for one thing," Ron set in at once. "For another thing, he is too old to be anyone's _apprentice_. Yet he's so skilled, as you'd have us all know. Do you know, I heard a rumor, and I reckon it must be true, all these things considered."

"Oh, now isn't the time for rumors!" Hermione scolded him, but Ron was undeterred.

"The way I hear it, he was into all sorts of black arts and dark magic in the village he came from. He finally got so dark with it all, that they decided he needed to leave! How's that for "unpleasant"? An eviction from an entire _town_ – something's not right with Snape, don't you agree?"

"Makes sense," Harry said, earning himself one nasty look from Hermione. "Well, sorry, Hermione," he then said. "But it is a bit too weird for someone to know so much about magic and alchemy like he does, without - as he'd have you think - ever having dabbled very much in it before."

Sighing, Hermione frowned as she looked on to watch her father still at work. She felt really bad for Lavender, and she was busy hoping against all hope that all her father's efforts for the poor girl wouldn't be a waste when the door opened, allowing a man with chin-length, raven black hair to enter into the home.

Looking over first to the table, to see the state the patient was in, he then darted his dark eyes over to the direction of the three friends, who were still huddled in the corner. "It would figure," he said, speaking in a quiet, yet surly and elongated drawl of a voice. "That my understudies would be standing around, completely useless – if not, perhaps, oblivious, to the situation going on around them."

"My father asked us not to interfere," Hermione said simply, but the apprentice didn't acknowledge her explanation. No, he simply rid himself of his cloak and approached the table, ready to help the apothecary with the situation at hand. The three friends, indeed not knowing what else to do, remained put where they were, all wanting nothing more at the moment than for all these efforts to work, so that their fellow villager might be saved.


	2. Chapter 2

_Thank you to everyone who's read and/or reviewed!  
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><p>As Hermione slept, her dreams were scattered to and fro with glimpses of nightmares. These instances featured wolves, bloodied and mangled bodies, a blood red moon, and all ultimated with a stretch of dream where the young woman found herself lost within the trees of the forest, surrounded in a patch of nothing but Thorn trees, all the while as she ran in a seemingly endless loop. At the very end, she heard a loud scream, and it was here that the dreams decided to end.<p>

Opening her eyes to find that early morning had come, the girl with light brown hair slowly sat up in her bed, looking over to the other side of the room to watch as her father's apprentice busied himself with changing Lavender's bandages.

"They're sore, you know!" she shrieked, as another bandage was removed without so much as a notion that Apprentice Snape had ever even heard of the concept of being gentle.

"While sore wounds are indeed troublesome," the man replied in an emotionless voice. "Loss of limb is a tad more unsettling. Though, I wouldn't object to allowing it to happen, if you so insist. But if you _would_ rather keep your arm, then _I_ must insist that you allow me to change your bandages when it's necessary to do so."

"I am grateful for you changing them," Lavender replied with a grunt, as ointment was dabbed onto one of her wounds in a less than soothing manner. "I don't understand why a training apothecary would have such an undesirable bedside manner, though."

"One needs not sensitivity, nor manners to be an apothecary – merely talent. Also, Miss Granger – speaking of manners – it's considered quite rude to sit and listen in to other people's conversations."

* * *

><p>"I think he's a vampire." Ron gave Hermione a dark look as he said this, having just heard her story about Snape knowing she was awake and listening to his banter with Lavender without looking, as if he had some sort of psychic ability.<p>

"There's no-"

"-such thing as vampires," Ron said, attempting to mimic Hermione by speaking in a shrill voice.

"You _have_ heard Hermione speak before, right, Ron?" asked a second girl, who entered the main room after leaving one of the other two that happened to be present in the cabin. Sporting hair redder than her older brother's, she didn't have a single freckle on her skin, in contrast, and she was quite shorter than both he and Hermione, as well.

"Mind your own business, Ginny," Ron said, rolling his eyes. "Thanks to your plans with Hermione today, she won't be able to help Harry and me practice before our next potion and polstice brewing class with Snape."

"Last time I checked, studying didn't require more than one brain to accomplish," Ginny replied, before raising an eyebrow and adding, "Though, seeing as this is _you_ we're talking about, you might be right about needing more than one person to accommodate for a single brain when it comes to your lesson practicing."

Doing her best to suppress a snort upon hearing this, Hermione quickly glanced away, and when she did, it gave Ron the impression that she didn't find his sister's insult remotely humorous. In kind return, he said, "Don't be stupid, Ginny. Hermione has way more than one brain."

It was meant to be a compliment. It was supposed to imply how blatantly obvious her intelligence was, and how dare his kid sister be so rude as to imply there'd only be _one_ brain about when Hermione is present.

As the ginger looked back to Hermione, who was observing him as he might be have become momentarily insane, he saw that the intention had been lost on the wayside because of how oddly he'd worded what he'd said.

"Stupid girls!" he exclaimed, and when Hermione and Ginny both burst into laughter at this, he gave them each a menacing look, before storming pff into one of the other rooms.

"Shall we go before my brother works himself up into an outirght fit?" Ginny suggested, to which Hermione replied, "Yes, I do think that's best."

* * *

><p>At the center of the town, where the old church was located, there lived a pair of brothers. The two oldest members of the community, the pair was considered to be the high council of the village, and they were both revered for their wisdom and intuition. The eldest, Albus, was sought out by the villagers more for matters of morality, as well as matters of the heart. Indeed, he was also responsible for officiating every wedding held in the town.<p>

Aberforth, the younger one, was sought out more for his sense of logic. His pessimism made him a good judge of the true odds of any given situation, as he didn't have a tendency to view anything with a sense of false hope, which - in his opinion - his brother often did. In contrast to the business of weddings, he took to therefore officiating every funeral that took place in the village.

As it was on this particular morning, the both of them had been called together by a revered member of the community who was seeking council. As the pair of white-haired, long-bearded men now sat alongside one another before the villager in question, Albus kept his hands politely folded in his lap, while Aberforth sat up a bit straighter, a slightly more serious expression on his face.

"I thank you both for your time," the man said, bowing his head once as he sat before the council. "My issue is this: I fear there's a situation about to be at hand, if not already at hand, that needs quick attention."

"What sort of situation?" Albus asked calmly.

"I'm sure you have heard of the village girl that was attacked last night in the woods, during the first night of the waxing moon," the man said. "I spent most of the night caring for her wounds, and I have asked my apprentice to see to her while I am here. I fear, as you both might have guessed by now, that the wolf that got to her may have very well been a werewolf."

A moment of silence met his, before Aberforth said, "This village hasn't seen a werewolf attack in several, long years."

"I'm aware. Yet, it concerns me still. The timing was much too great to be passed off as a coincidence…" the apothecary said, looking out through a nearby opened window as he wore a grave expression on his face.

"I'm not sure how or why a werewolf would be among us again," Albus said. "I won't dismiss it as an impossibility, but it did last appear when I was only a year or so older than your own daughter is now, Robere. It might indeed be a coincidence, even if you don't think its likely to be the case."

"There is one other thing," the tired-looking man replied, returning his gaze to the brothers, and away from the happenings going on beyond the window. "My daughter and Lavender both have claimed that after knocking the wolf was knocked unconscious, they looked to find it disappeared after the fact. Hermione believes it to be either a hallucination or a bizarrely quiet wolf in question. Lavender shares my fear about the possibility of a werewolf, though."

Albus and Aberforth looked at each other at once, exchanging dark and suddenly concerned glances.

"I think it might be prudent to send for Remus Lupin of Melltith Olau Leuad," Aberforth said quietly to his brother, who replied with a curt nod, saying, "I agree. It might also be wise to call upon Alastor of Llygad Wallgof."

"You're right. He could give advice and insight towards the situation, as well," Aberforth returned, before looking back to the apothecary. "We will indeed seek two outsiders who are well-versed in lycanthropy to take the situation into account and provide their thoughts."

"Thank you again," Robere replied, standing from his chair and bowing his head once more in their direction. "I might be foolish to suspect a man-wolf, as my daughter suggests, but I will doubtless feel better once it is seen to by men of expertise on the issue."

"We will send word with Fawkes at once," Albus said, gesturing to the corner where a grand bird sat perched on a golden stick that protruded from the wall. As Robere looked over to the fiery-colored bird, it looked back at him knowingly, before giving a short cry.

"Fawkes has yet to fail us," Aberforth added, as the apothecary looked back to him and his brother both. "We shall expect the two outsiders within three to four days of them receiving our correspondence."

"Trouble yourself not with much worry, if it is possible to avoid it," Albus said then, and the apothecary vowed to try not to, before bowing his head a final time and leaving the old church.

"Do you think another werewolf might really be upon us again after all these years have passed us by?" Albus said quietly, once the apothecary had gone.

"I'd like to say that no, I don't believe so. But the wolf vanishing after an attack is all too familiar for me to truly believe what my logic would like me to hold credence to," Aberforth answered gravely, and the brothers exchanged another troubling glance, before the eldest of the two got up and walked over to sit at a table in the corner; putting quill to papyrus, he began to scrawl out two separate distress calls for two very different men to recieve.

* * *

><p>"He's such a <em>wonderful<em> Queddych player," Ginny said breathlessly as she stood alongside Hermione, the both of them situated behind a large mess of unkempt bushes near an old, worn down field that was frequently used by the village boys to play games on.

The game in question that was currently going on was, by far, the most popular of all activities ever seen in Horthwarg. Referred to as the aforementioned title of _Queddych_, the game consisted of two teams of boys running about while balls were thrown back and forth, from one end of the field to the next, the objective being for the _Seeker_ to catch the smallest of the three tossed balls (which were only tossed across the field once every ten minutes), to end the game. If other players managed to catch the largest ball, and toss it into their goal post at their allocated end of the field, then points were also gained, but whether the game was won or not was practically all on the shoulders of the Seeker, for the smallest ball was worth the most points when caught, by a considerable margin.

There were also other players with other varying jobs involved in the game. For instance, people who tried to catch the ball that could be tossed into one of three goal hoops were called _Chasers_, while two pairs of _Beaters_ could found on either team. Said Beaters were responsible for carrying bats as they ran around, in order to strike away a solid, difficult to throw, and painful-when-struck-with ball called a bludger, named for its tendency to bludgeon players. Finally, there were people posted at the opposing team's goal post, responsible for guarding the hoops there, keeping the ball from entering in through one of them. This member of the team was called a _Keeper_.

As it was, Harry was a renowned Seeker, and was always fought over to be on certain teams. Two of Ginny's six older brothers also currently played Queddych quite often – Fred and George – while her two eldest brothers, Bill and Charlie, were once known as fantastic players, but had since retired from playing. Percy, her third eldest brother, had never so much as given an ounce of care regarding the sport, while Ron, in contrast, positively _loved_ Queddych. The sole problem was that he wasn't very talented when it came to actually playing, which kept him frequently on the sidelines when a serious game was taking place.

"Harry _is_ a very good player," Hermione admitted, watching the ongoing game along with Ginny; she, unlike the redhead and most of her brothers, wasn't as enthused about Queddych, but did find it entertaining enough to keep her interested for the most part.

"Very good? He's a sight to behold," Ginny returned, her eyes glued to the field.

"Now hang on a moment," Hermione said, looking puzzled. "You were just out with Dean the other night, weren't you? You told me you were over Harry a year ago!"

"Well, a girl can change her mind, can't she?" Ginny replied, blushing rather fiercely as she spoke.

"You're going back and forth between different mindsets faster than the referees at the ends of the field toss the balls back and forth during the game," Hermione said to her, before giving a weary sigh. "I know it feels near impossible sometimes to decide whether or not you thoroughly like or dislike someone altogether. Trust me; I have inner Queddych matches of my own when it comes to Ron. But _still_, why let Dean court you if you're back to fancying Harry?"

"Dean is very nice, polite, _funny_ – also good at Queddych," Ginny listed, before glancing away from the field, a bit of a guilty look on her face. "So I really shouldn't be letting him court me, no – not if I'm interested in Harry. But that's the thing, you know? When I might start to like Harry, he's typically with another girl, or at least fancying another girl. Remember Cho, from the village of Kellet-Town - Or how about Fleur, from the _Beauté glorifié_ Providence?"

"Oh, he only vaguely liked Fleur, along with the rest of the men in town, might I remind you – including, though not limited to, your own brother, Bill, who was so intrigued that he followed her back to her own providence just to be able to court her."

"Well, Harry himself courted Cho for the couple of months her family stayed in this village," Ginny replied, a bit of a sour look on her face.

"Look, you can't blame a man for not courting you if never let it be known that you fancy him," Hermione pointed out.

"That's nonsense. He knows I used to like him."

"Sure, you liked him when you were eleven years old! That's a few years back, and not to mention, he probably still reckons it was a childhood crush, it happened so long ago."

"Are you truly this adamant about your feeling that I should not be courted by Harry Potter?" Ginny then asked, pointblank, and Hermione herself blushed just a bit.

"I'm adamant about not letting people and their feelings be played around with," she clarified to the redhead, who took a decent amount of offense to the explanation given.

"I'm not playing with anyone's feelings!" Ginny exclaimed with widened eyes, her tone of voice giving away just how indignant she felt at being accused of such a thing.

"Not on purpose, no – of course you wouldn't intentionally do such a thing, Ginny. I apologize for making you think I saw you in such a light. I just think that if a person is so confused about who they would like to be with, that perhaps they shouldn't just rush into things with either of the people they think they might like - do you know what I mean?"

"I can respect your opinion on the matter, Hermione, but it's not that easy for a person to tell someone else how much they care about them. It can all go so impossibly wrong, especially if the person you intend to confess to isn't all that approachable," Ginny said defensively, looking back over to Harry on the pitch.

Hermione felt confused by this statement. "Harry – unapproachable?" she said, in a voice that suggested Ginny might be a mad woman. "He's the kindest, most understanding and entirely approachable person in this entire village. He listens, he gives insight to whatever you're going through, he's more than willing to help in whichever way he can, and he's the best friend a person could have."

Looking back to Hermione with raised eyebrows, Ginny said to her, "Well, not for nothing – and no offense – but it's now no _wonder_ why my brother considers you unapproachable."

"_Excuse me_?"

"Sorry! I said I didn't mean you to take offense to it!" Ginny said, frowning. "It's just that Ron has a hard enough time as it is without knowing that you're impossibly intelligent. Then, on top of that, there's the fact that you understand Harry so well, and while Harry is on par with Ron's level of typical lesson grades, he is talented in other areas; Queddych, the militia training they're both going through, actually being able _to_ ask girls out and court them – Don't think for a second that Ron isn't intimidated by all this."

"I know you didn't mean any more offense than I did, but the fact of the matter is that I will not pretend that I am to blame for your brother's insecurities. After all, Viktor Krum from Strumdrav had no problem courting me during that tri-village meeting of the providential militias. I could tell even then that Ron was sour about the whole thing, but honestly, he could have just spoken up and had my hand as well as Viktor had taken it. Ron's funny, tall, admirable, witty, brave – any number of just as good traits as Viktor or Harry."

"But Ron still _isn't _Harry, who, in your own words, is the best friend a person could have," Ginny replied.

Looking troubled, Hermione turned her gaze to the field where the game was still ongoing, before saying, "It's just never …been that way between me and Harry. Let whoever you want to court you, court you, Ginny. It's only my opinion that people should be more sensitive when it comes to such things; apparently, it's no one else's."

Both girls falling silent after this, they continued to watch the game without saying much at all to each other. Hermione was still troubled about Ron being apparently too afraid to even tell her he might like to someday court her, while Ginny felt troubled that Hermione wasn't a little _too_ fond of Harry.

Finally, when the game had ended (with a win for Harry's team, which no one was surprised about) and players had begun to leave the field, the pair of girls watched and waited for their friend to do the same, though someone else from a different area around the field walked out to him first, carrying a basket as she went.

"_What is Romilda doing here_?" Ginny and Hermione said simultaneously, before glancing at one another in surprise.

"Bitten by the bug of jealousy?" asked Ginny's brother, Fred, as he approached the two of them.

"Sanity been usurped by the green-eyed monster within?" asked George, who happened to be Fred's identical twin, as he, too, approached the girls.

"No," Hermione said, sighing.

"Don't be silly," Ginny added.

"Don't tell us what to do," the brothers said in unison, before George placed a finger beneath his little sister's chin, then proceeding to lift it upward slightly. "Cheer up. Romilda's only bringing the bloke some cupcakes she made."

"She's _been_ doing it every Queddych match – she just happens to usually catch Harry before the game begins. Today she seems to simply be running late," Fred pointed out, looking onto the field to watch Harry with the tall, scrawny, raven-haired girl, who was pushing the wicker basket from her hands into his.

"He seems awfully hesitant to _accept_ the cupcakes," Hermione observed.

"You'd be hesitant, too, if you'd tried them," George said.

"You've been eating her cupcakes, too!" Ginny exclaimed, sounding mildly outraged.

"Don't be so worked up," Fred said to her. "After all, we know you like Harry, but Dean doesn't get his underclothes in a bunch when we go to the pub with everyone's favorite Seeker."

Seeing that Ginny looked mildly disgruntled, Fred added, "But no worries. As was said, Harry has every right to be hesitant about receiving those cakes."

"Forget hesitant," piped in George. "One couldn't blame him if he took them and fed them to someone on Death Row."

"She's that terrible at baking, is she?" Ginny asked, proceeding to watch as both her brothers gave her grave nods, before looking over to Harry to see that he had finally taken the basket; there was, however, a look of terror on his face as Romilda leant in toward him, hands clasped.

"Now she's trying to make him eat one in front of her," Fred whispered in explanation. "See, she's always trying to make the recipe 'more tasty'."

"And by 'more tasty', Fred really means 'more lethal'," George added darkly.

"Poor Harry," Hermione sighed, and in reply, Fred and George stepped over, nearer to her.

"Are you suddenly finding yourself bitten by the jealousy bug after all?" the former asked her, as the latter smirked devilishly.

"_No_," she said, crossing her arms.

"They always say defiance is the first sign of a lovesick heart," George teased her.

"I am not lovesick!" Hermione exclaimed in an exasperated voice.

"Followed by symptom number two: _denial_," Fred replied.

Finally reaching the peak of her temper, the brown-eyed girl bid good day to the Weasley family members, before leaving the site altogether.

"Why'd you go and run her off for?" Ginny asked, giving her twin brothers nasty looks.

"Are you really all that angry about it?" Fred asked her, before looking over to George, who said, "After all, we heard your tone of voice raise to an _uncanny_ mimic of Mum's voice today. Hermione must have said _something_ to get you going."

"Stop trying to read my actions. Keep doing it and you'll both end up with a reputation to rival Mad Lady Trelawney's," Ginny warned them.

"You're right. Why, with all the anger and contempt in your voice, you don't sound remotely annoyed or upset about anything at all," George replied sarcastically, to which Ginny rolled her eyes and also left the field.

"Amazing," said Harry, as he now approached Fred and George. "Do you bathe in girl-repellant, or just exude it naturally?"

"Nah, it wasn't our own, natural talents that ran those two off," George said.

"What was it then?" Harry inquired.

"We offered them both one of your beloved Romilda-cakes," Fred answered him.

"Ah," Harry said then, his expression growing a bit glum. "Well, if I could march away from them myself, then I would."

"Do they have an aftertaste of sulfur this week like they did last week?" Fred asked.

"Nope," Harry answered.

"Was it like the week before last then, when they left behind a taste of molded cheese?" Fred ventured to guess again.

"_I wish_," Harry replied, staring down warily at the basket in his hands. "This time I was greeted to a an aftertaste of rotting flesh."

"I had no idea you knew what rotting flesh tasted like, Harry," George commented.

"I didn't until today," he said, before sighing apathetically.


	3. Chapter 3

_Again, thank you readers and reviewers! I do apologize for not updating this in ages! Anyway, here we continue now.  
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><p>Hermione looked up through the sparse breaks amongst the tree tops, before turning slowly around on the spot as what little sky shone through grew inexplicably darker all of a sudden; her sight trailing downward, she realized she was now amongst the Thorn trees again. Had she somehow teleported? No such thing – so of course not. No – such – <em>thing<em>.

Hearing a howl that wasn't too far away from her, she then hiked up the tail end of her skirt and took off at a full-blown run, travelling so impeccably fast that she seemed immune to tripping over roots and snarls and the like. However, regardless how much she ran forward, she seemed to remain in the midst of nothing but those accursed Thorn trees, and the howl itself was occurring now in high frequency, growing closer and closer each time its sound was made clear.

"Oh, God. . ." she said beneath her breath, before widening her eyes as she physically saw said breath hover before herself in the form of a mist; it was as if she was suddenly outside in the absolute dead of winter itself.

Glancing downward, she found that snow was now covering the forest ground. Perking her ears, she felt her heart skip a beat as there was a sound of crunching footsteps then heard, coming from somewhere behind her. She could tell from the way the steps sounded that they didn't belong to any human being _she'd_ ever heard walk upon snow before. They were too quick – too oddly paced.

Closing her eyes, she then slowly turned around to face the direction she'd just had her back turned towards. She heard a growl – more footsteps – a second growl – closer, slower-paced footsteps . . .

Sitting bolt upright in her bed, Hermione swiftly swung her legs to the side of it and slid down, adrenaline pulsating through her veins not only from the dream she'd been having, but from the sight the noise of the chaos that was unfolding inside her own home.

"What's happened?" she exclaimed breathlessly, looking over to Lavender, who – after being looked after for another day and night at the apothecary's house – was now looking and feeling much better; she also happened to have been standing beside Hermione's bed, rather than lying in the spare one.

"I don't know!" the buxom blond cried back, even though tears seemed to be threatening to surface in her eyes. "I got out of the bed and moved over here when she was brought in. I don't know _what_ happened to her!"

"You don't know what happened to whom?" Hermione asked, before snapping her head over in the direction of the spare bed, only to find that a group of many people was huddled around it, concealing its patient from view.

Hermione's mind still felt rushed, panicked and out of sorts from her dream, and so without much preamble she herself rushed over to join the huddle of people. "What's going on?" she asked, though her question went unheard, mostly due to the fact that many of the people present were making much noise, all trying to speak over – as well as to – one another; she was kept out from actually viewing the bed as well, for there were simply too many people around it.

Taking a step back as her own father then managed it somehow and moved in amongst said people with a tray full of varying treatments and instruments upon it in his hands, Hermione then widened her eyes as she came to realize that an astonishing number of the people around the bed were redheaded - in fact, all of them were, save for her own father.

"Ron?" she whispered, her eyes darting all about, before she caught the sight of the profile of his face as he stood slightly to the side. "Ron! What's happened?"

Hearing her outcry, the tall and freckle-faced young man took a reluctant step back from the bed, before turning and approaching his friend in such a way that it brought a chill to her spine, one that ran down the length of it, before surging back upwards again, and repeating until she began to feel sick. "Why . . . are you crying?" she asked him simply, a lump forming in her throat.

"Ginny," he replied, before throwing his arms around Hermione, enclosing her in more of a crush than an actual hug. "She – we think – was attacked like Lavender was, but, but it's bad – it's much worse, and, and I don't know what's going to happen."

By this point, Lavender had – though more cautiously than Hermione had done – also stepped nearer to the bed and the mass of people. Watching the distraught image of Ron cling to Hermione in such a way caused the hairs on the back of her neck to prick, standing up. She'd never actually seen a single one of the Weasley men cry before, despite injury after injury on the Queddych pitch. Not one tear, and yet now, a deluge from one of them.

Stepping beyond the two of them, Lavender slowly pushed her way into the crowd, before gasping loudly as she lay sight upon the body on the bed that she herself had been staying in the past couple of days.

The side of Ginevra Weasley's face seemed to be almost _spliced_ – that was the first and foremost thing that caught Lavender's attention. More gruesome than anything she'd certainly ever seen (including the time Charlie Weasley had broken a leg, complete with bone breaking right through the skin itself) it made her face pale even more so than it's constantly anemic-looking state that came as of late with her own wolf attack in the woods.

It wasn't just the sight of the split-open skin along the side of her face that was so disturbing, it was also the fact that, when looked upon at just the right angle, one could tell that the injury led straight down the bone, which appeared startling white amidst the bloodied, gruesome mess of skin otherwise. The other side of her face looked to be intact, but her both of her arms had blood on them – one seemed to be only splattered by it, though the other was actively bleeding – and the less described about the state of her torso and downward, the better. It was a terrible sight, and yet Lavender continued to stare at it wide-eyed, the corners of her mouth twitching downward as she seemed caught in a permanent state of almost-crying.

"Why is she here? Why are all these _people here_?"

Breaking apart from their embrace, Hermione and Ron looked over to find that at some point amidst the chaos Apprentice Snape had entered into the cabin, as well, with Percy Weasley stepping in after him.

"The apprentice has a point now – how can they help Ginny if you're all in here?" the third eldest Weasley son stated, causing his mother to turn around and fix him with a glare.

"If you think I'm about to leave my daughter be . . . she can't even _speak_ or wake up, Percy!"

"Mother, I'm not trying to upset you, I'm just being logical!" Percy cried back, an emotionally torn look on his face as he stepped forward and linked arms with both Fred and George from behind. "If nothing else, you two are coming with me. I didn't leave to fetch Apprentice Snape just to have the situation be that he can't even approach our sister."

"Why should _we_ leave her side?" the twins asked in unison, both looking fit to murder Percy right then and there for having the nerve to physically try and _remove_ them from the scene.

"Again, people should leave so that there is sufficient room for the apothecaries to do their job and heal our only sister! Now stop being bull-headed and let's _go_."

"Percy . . . has a point," Arthur – the Weasley patriarch then said, speaking calmly despite the tears evident on his own, weary face. "Besides, someone has to go and let the Elder Council become aware of this new attack, while someone else still has to pen letters to be sent to Bill in the Beauté glorifié Providence, and Charlie too, in Romania."

"Yes, Father," George said. "Of course. I'll go and let the Elder Council know what's happened to Ginny."

"I'll write Bill," Fred added, and then finally Percy said, "And I'll pen the urgent letter to Charlie."

"Thank you all," Arthur said, before swallowing hard as he returned full attention to his daughter lying there, seemingly unconscious, bleeding – perhaps – to death, if the work of the apothecaries didn't prove to be quick enough; able to feel the way his wife trembled so, lost in her own horror, he reached over and took hold of her hand, squeezing it tightly.

Watching as three of the Weasley's then left, Hermione herself approached Lavender, before taking hold of her hand and gently tugging at it; though it wasn't much, it was enough to get the girl to pull away from the table. Once she had, she turned to Hermione and said to her, "Don't look at Ginny. You'll never be able to un-see it or remember her as normal self if you do . . ."

Closing her eyes, Hermione wished very much that she was still only caught up in a state of nightmare. Feeling Lavender squeeze her hand before the sounds of the blond breaking down into earnest tears at last were heard, the bushy-haired teenager squeezed her eyes further shut, as tight as she could to indeed keep herself from laying sight upon one of her dearest friends in such a state of life or death.

Standing to her other side, she could hear Ron's labored and panicked breathing, though he no longer sounded like he was crying. It might have been pompous for her to do so, she did consider, but Hermione – eyes still closed – ultimately found herself speaking up, saying to Ron: "M-Maybe you should and get Harry. Why isn't he here anyway? He lives with you all . . ."

"Harry's the one that found Ginny in the woods," Ron said quietly. "He brought her here, came to wake us all up . . . we came here, and then he was nowhere to be found. I mean, I could go and try to find him, but my one and only, baby sister is-"

"No," Hermione said, interrupting him. "I'm sorry – so sorry." Letting go of Lavender's hand, she opened her eyes at last, but turned to face Ron as she did so. "I'll go look for Harry myself."

Letting her leave without further ado, Ron and Lavender remained side by side, looking on with Molly and Arthur as both Robere and Snape worked fervently together to try and stop the bleeding – to try and save the life of the girl on the bed before them.

Stepping out into the cold night air in nothing but her dressing gown – indeed, not even shoes were on her feet – Hermione folded her arms across her bosom to try to ward off the climatic chill as she aimlessly began to wander about the village. Some people were out of their houses, whispering amongst themselves in small clusters. On occasion, someone would cry out to the apothecary's daughter, to ask what was going on inside her home, but she simply pretended not to hear them when and if people did this. She wasn't trying to be rude, but it was horrifying, what the Weasley's were going through, and it wasn't anyone else's business anyway to know about it.

Eventually she walked past the house that belonged to Lavender's family, and when the girl's mother stuck her head out of through a window and called her name, Hermione made a small exception, and went over to her.

"Is my Lavender quite alright? We finally just got to visit her earlier today, you know, and now all this commotion—"

"She's fine, honest, ma'am," the brown-eyed girl said. "She's standing even – perfectly fine out of bed, I'd say."

"So do you suppose she can come home tomorrow?"

"That's really up to my father, but I would guess that yes, she probably will be coming home tomorrow." As the girl said this, she felt a strange lurch from somewhere around her belly button; she bid adieu to the woman in the window, before stepping away, and she'd wandered several houses beyond Lavender's home before it came to her to realize what had caused the lurch of pain in her stomach.

Feeling a shiver unrelated to the wind go through her body, Hermione quickly rushed off to the side of the main village path, before becoming sick by some bushes. Tears beginning to stream down her face, she couldn't help but keep thinking the same thing over and over again: _Would Ginny ever be going back home after this night?_

Back in the apothecary's house, Snape and Robere were still fast and hard at work to fix up the patient when the door to the cabin was burst open violently, causing all present to glance toward it, if even just for a fraction of a second, to see who'd done such a thing. Much to the surprise of all, it was the brothers' Dumbledore, Aberforth marching into the cabin first with Albus following closely after him.

"You there," the younger of the brothers said, stepping up to Lavender. "Who had asked you to go into the woods the other night?"

"What? I - Ginny is -"

"Answer me!" Aberforth demanded, before Albus appeared at his side.

"Missus Brown," he said, in a kinder, but just as urgent tone of voice. "We absolutely must know who or what and why you came to be in the woods after nightfall the other evening. We cannot, as it seems, yet ask this of the Weasley girl, so you're the only link to how we might stop any more attacks from occuring right now."

Looking over to George as he also finally entered back into the cabin, Molly and Arthur gave him puzzled, concerned looks; the apothecary and his apprentice had since wordlessly returned to their work attending to Ginny.

"They demanded to know _why_ Ginny was in the woods at all," George said, looking just as puzzled as he looked back to both his parents. "I said I didn't know – they said they wanted to see Lavender – how is Ginny anyway? Is she doing any better now?"

Outstretching a hand toward her son, Molly Weasley soon drew him into her arms for a hug, though neither she nor her husband had an actual answer to give him regarding his sister's state of being.

"Now hold on," Ron said, stepping in front of the much shaken looking Lavender, as they both stood a few feet away from the bed now. "She's not quite over her own attack, you know."

"Don't disrespect us, boy," Aberforth snarled, letting his glasses slide down all the way to the tip of his nose. "Now kindly let us hear her answer, unless you want others to reach the same fate - being led into the woods only to be attacked in the dead of night."

Glaring back at the elder, Ron eventually obeyed regardless of his initial reactions, and stepped aside, though he placed a hand at Lavender's shoulder, to try and comfort her throughout the interrogation that was to come.

"Again, all we need to know is the following:" Albus said. "Where were you when you first got the notion to go into the woods the other night? If someone else persuaded you, who was it? Lastly, do you remember at all what the wolf that attacked you look like?"

"I … It was the night before my attack. I was in my home, lying awake in my bed after my parents had gone to sleep. I'd had a headache, you see, and anyway, I wasn't yet asleep, and I happened to hear someone's voice drift into the house, coming from outside the window over my bed."

"Alright," Aberforth said, nodding his head slowly. "Who'd the voice belong to?"

"I never knew – that was the strange thing, really. They wouldn't say who they were, but they did know to call me by my name, and also, their voice was weird. It sounded almost as if they were trying to hide their _real_ voice, whoever they were – though I _can_ tell you, it sounded scratchier, like a male's voice. Well anyway, they asked me to go outside."

"And did you?" Albus asked.

"No," Lavender said, shaking her head. "I was at first suspicious, naturally, but once they kept insisting they knew me – and how they did so was they told me what I looked like down to the last letter – _you have wavy blond hair, your skin is fare, your nose is a little long, but your face is no less pretty for it_."

"They called you pretty, did they?" Aberforth said, looking grim. "I suppose they arranged for you to meet them the following night, knowing well enough you wouldn't in fact meet them _that_ night then, am I quite right?"

"You are quite right – how do you . . .?" Lavender began, looking quite confused.

"We have enough answers," Aberforth said to her, cutting her off.

"You wanted to know what the wolf looked like," Lavender pointed out. "Although, I don't remember anything extraordinary beyond the fact that he disappeared after Hermione and I began to walk away from it."

"Thank you, Missus Brown, you have been quite helpful – truly," Albus said.

It was then that the elders stepped over to the bed, speaking in hushed tones to find out what they could about Ginny's bleak-looking condition. Lavender, on the other hand, was left with Ron, who looked down at her, a puzzled expression that was quite similar to her own on his face as he kept his hand at her shoulder, squeezing her there now to try and help her feel less shaken up by all that was going on. He didn't know if it was working, but he did know that _he'd_ have liked some way of comforting his own self; as it was, he certainly didn't, and considering everything, it was no wonder why not.

Back outside, in several, several cabins beyond that of the apothecary's, Hermione was knelt to the ground, not far from the bushes she'd grown sick near. Shivering all over, she kept her arms folded, her head bowed as the night winds about her howled and danced, flicking her hair to and fro, as if its brown, wavy locks were its own personal playthings.

"Hermione?"

Barely tilting her head upward upon hearing a familiar voice speak her name, the frozen-to-the-bone girl said, "Harry – I was looking for you when I felt really sick. I was just resting here for a few moments; I was planning to get up and get back to looking for you any moment now, really."

"Oh, you're like this on account of me?" he said, sounding ashamed of himself, before quickly helping his friend upward to a standing state, and then unfastening his own night coat and slipping her into it; she let him do so with much ease – indeed, she was as limber and willing as a ragdoll, to do whatever motion he wanted her to.

"How did you become sick?" he asked, sounding scared and worried both as he beckoned her to tilt back slightly, so that he could lift her up from the ground, to carry her back into the village bridal-style. "Hermione, I already found Ginny torn to pieces tonight. She's like my own sister – please don't tell me you might be lost, too. Why were you by the woods at all?"

Her arms clung around Harry's neck, Hermione said, "Nothing attacked me, and I'll honestly be fine, so please don't worry. Like I told you, I was _looking for you_ – I felt sick to my stomach after I realized how bad off . . . well, just how bad off Ginny is."

"You mean they let you get a look at her like that?" Harry asked; Hermione shook her head, before nuzzling in closer against his chest for warmth.

"I was too much of a coward to look at her. At least – after Lavender warned me not to lay my eyes on Ginny, I was."

"Do you – do you think you're going to be alright?" Harry then asked, as he picked up his pace, quickly taking the path that would lead back to the home he and the Weasley's lived in.

"I do now that you've got me," she answered him in a quiet, sleepy voice.

"Stay awake. The cold's gotten to you something bad – I have to get you warmed up. There's a lot of commotion in your cabin, yes?"

Hermione nodded against Harry's chest in confirmation.

"Right," Harry said, before pushing open the Weasley's door with his foot, finding that no one was inside the cabin at all. "Look, I've taken you to my home instead. Are you alright with that?"

"Of course," Hermione said, and before she knew it, she felt herself being laid upon a big, soft bed; soon after that, blanket after blanket was being placed atop her, and she felt herself growing quite warm, next to nearly forgetting just how unforgiving the cold outside had been with no coat or shoes on.

Sitting at the side of the bed, Harry took hold of one of her hands in both of his, before rubbing it, massaging it back to warmth.

"Thank you for taking care of me, Harry," Hermione said to him. "I'm sure I'll be perfectly better soon. It just hit me after I had been walking out in the cold for a while, you know, how terrible everything has been – the nightmares, the wolf attacks, Ginny, _our_ Ginny – she's one of our dearest friends, and she's poor Ron's sister, oh! And poor Molly and Arthur and, and the whole lot – I wish there was something I could do . . ."

Releasing Hermione's right hand and reaching over to begin rubbing her left one instead, Harry leant forward and kissed her on the forehead, before pulling away and saying, "You don't have to cry. Your father will make Ginny better."

Unable to stop her tears, however, the girl simply replied, "I hope so."


	4. Chapter 4

The sky above the village of Horthwarg was bleak and cold, almost as if it was actively mimicking the spirit of the townsfolk living down beneath the lifeless, stationary clouds it contained.

"We are gathered here this today in the quick, ill-fashioned manner that we are due to an unfortunate, but necessary circumstance." Elder Aberforth said this as he stood before a gathering of the people from the village in the local cemetery. "As you're all aware, I'm sure, our ritualistic customs wouldn't rush such an occurrence as this one taking place here, upon this sad, sad day. However, in light of the recent events that have come along with the waxing of the moon, things had to be done this way. I would like to, before we officially begin here, offer personal apology to Arthur and Molly Weasley, again, for the rushed nature of this ceremony. Understand that it had to be so."

Elsewhere in the village, there was a strange outcry to be heard, coming from the Brown household. Lavender, who had been advised by the Brothers' Dumbledore themselves to stay at home whilst her parents attended the funeral of Ginny Weasley (who'd officially passed away around the stroke of four that very same morning), had been sitting by herself at the side of her bed, sulking as she looked over through the open window that was above her bed.

She felt as if she was paying disrespect to the Weasley girl's memory by not being present at her funeral, and it was over this matter that she was so upset when there had been a knock at her door. Confused, as she felt quite sure that nearly everyone in the village would be at cemetery - attending the very same inexplicably rushed funeral that she had been told not to - Lavender had cautiously answered the door.

Her scream of surprise at being grabbed by the man that had come to call was short lived, for he had soon placed a gloved hand over her mouth the second she began to make noise. Little did this kidnapper know, however, that there was someone else present amongst the village that was not currently at the cemetery, either.

It was a random occurrence that made this thing true, as Molly Weasley had – upon being almost nearly at the cemetery – decided that she should have brought along a plaything from her only daughter's childhood, to be put into the ground with her, and keep her company in whatever life she entered into next.

Though Albus and Aberforth were adamant that the funeral not be delayed, lest a terrible circumstance occur as a result, Molly had begun to cry, and Ronald, her now-youngest child, couldn't stand to witness it. Thusly, he'd said to her that he'd hurry back home and fetch the little doll, before returning to the ceremony with it.

So, Ron, having just stepped out of his home with said doll in hand, had played witness to hearing the cry, and had then gone to investigate it. He knew that Lavender was at home, as he'd been in the apothecary's house with her when the Elder Council had returned to order it to be so. Who else, then, he decided, would've been crying out for help, but her? This caused him to make a beeline for the Brown home, and as it so happened, he got there just as the kidnapper had pulled squirming, kicking Lavender around the side of her own house.

"What's going on? Let her go!" Ron had cried out, before rushing forward and outright tackling the miscreant and Lavender both to the ground.

Naturally, this had caused Lavender to shriek some more, now in confusion – sincerely, she thought to herself, why were these crazy things happening and from what direction were they all coming? – and soon enough she had rolled away from her would-be kidnapper, and was watching Ron clock him in the face repeatedly, until he seemed to be knocked out.

"_Ron_?" she said breathlessly, her eyes wide as she looked on to see that whoever had attempted to snatch her had a veil of some sort tightly covering his face. "What – thank you – indeed, thank you for saving me, but . . . why aren't you at the funeral, though? Why are you holding a doll?"

Lavender, you see, had inwardly feared that she'd gone mad by this point, especially when Ron didn't even answer any of her questions, but simply took her hand and helped her up, before running with her in a direction that led toward the west of the town, pulling her along as he ran toward – presumably – the cemetery, and therefore, the funeral.

"And so, let no spirit or demon of demise put asunder the soul of this girl, who was so brutally snatched away from her life, from the heavens above – may she rest in peace forever in the everlasting rest that the Afterlife brings-" Pausing suddenly to take a momentary break from the eulogy he was giving, Aberforth Dumbledore stared wide-eyed in the direction of the cemetery entrance as the image of Ron Weasley – hand-in-hand with Lavender Brown – came into view. "Forgive me," he said, clearing his throat as he restated, "May she rest in peace forever in the everlasting rest that the Afterlife brings, with no flickering flames of Hell touching her eternally kindred spirit."

Then bowing his head once, briefly, he added, "May the child now be put to rest. I see her brother has returned, with the relic her mother wished to have buried along with her. Go on, Ronald; give the doll there to your mother, so that it may be so."

"Yes, of course," Ron replied, hurrying over to his mother and handing over the doll, which she accepted as she continued to cry in a slow and quiet fashion, her tragedy clear and heartbreakingly present.

While this occurred, Aberforth made a beeline for Lavender, before saying to her in a hushed tone once he was stood before her, "How is it you're here? I thought that Albus and myself had made our intent clear earlier this morning – you were to stay at home and not attend this funeral, if only for your own health."

"Forgive me, sir, but someone verily attempted to take me _from my home_ – Ron there, he rescued me from the arms of the kidnapper."

"_Kidnapper_?" Lavender's mother exclaimed in a rather loud voice, standing up from her seat and disregarding proper etiquette as she hurried over to make it to her daughter's side, before pulling her into her arms and kissing her atop her hair. "What kidnapper? Who tried to take you?"

"His face was covered. Ron knocked him out though – punched him until he stopped moving – he was laying by the side of the house when we left for the cemetery," Lavender said to her mother, before looking back to Aberforth and saying, "It's true. You can find him there now still, probably."

Aberforth then looked over in the direction of his brother, and the pair exchanged extremely concerned-looking glances, before the youngest left the scene, leaving his older brother to move forward to stand before the crowd in his stead, even as Molly moved forward to place the doll with Ginny, so that the funeral processions could proceed as normal.

"Please, Missus Brown, take your seat with your daughter, now that she is safe with you and your husband, as well – for surely, take comfort in knowing that no harm might befall her whilst she is verily under your own watchful eyes," Albus said in his kind, serene tone of voice; the two Brown women heeded his words, slowly moving to sit near to Mr. Brown amongst the crowd present.

"Thank you," Albus said to them, before bowing his head and saying, "Now let us collectively send a prayer for a safe journey for this child's soul, as she physically enters the ground but spiritually enters into a world unknown, but surely much better than this one we do know now."

After the funeral was over, Molly and Arthur lingered behind, as Albus wanted to speak with them more on the matter of the rushed nature of the funeral, and to offer a personal apology himself for it having to be so. Fred and George had stuck around too, wanting to hear this apology for their selves, while Percy had to leave early, to go and pen two letters on instruction of his father, one each to both Bill and Charlie, to explain to them that a funeral had already taken place for their poor sister, and the details thereof.

Ron, who was instructed to neither stay nor leave, decided to do the latter, exiting from the cemetery amidst the company of a pale-faced Hermione and a dismal-looking Harry.

"I still just . . . can't believe it," Harry, in fact, was saying as the three of them left, his eyes cast downward toward the ground. "I mean, I honestly believed that Robere would've been able to save her."

"Snape probably blundered it up somehow," Ron said at once, a murderous look flashing in his eyes as the very thought crossed his mind. "Robere saved Lavender, after all."

"Snape was present for that attack, and did nothing but help Lavender," Hermione pointed out, before earning a glare of her own from Ron. "Well, honestly, he did help, Ronald. The only thing responsible for Ginny's death is the wolf itself."

"The _w__ere_wolf itself, you mean," the ginger promptly corrected her, and while he expected her to claim that there was no such thing, Hermione – in all honesty – didn't have the heart to argue with him anymore on the matter.

"Maybe it's my fault, too," Harry then said, kicking at a rock on the path they were walking along. "Maybe I should've gotten to her sooner, or ran even faster while carrying her back to your house, Hermione."

"Don't blame yourself for it, Harry," she said to him at once, reaching over and taking hold of his hand; it was only meant to be a comforting gesture, but Ron saw it, and immediately felt a return of his vengeful feelings.

"Snape definitely had some part in it. He came in, he tried to tell us all to leave – and then things just went hopelessly downhill from there."

Sighing, Hermione gave Harry's hand a squeeze, before letting it go and bringing both her hands to cover over her eyes instead. Seeing this, Harry said to Ron, "Let's not upset Hermione any more than she already is, yeah?"

"What is with you two?" Ron said, giving the pair suspicious looks. "I know you were both gone for a long time last night – then we find you both in the house early this morning, _alone_."

"Right, because something absolutely happened between Hermione and I while our Ginny was dying, Ron. You're an idiot, sometimes."

"Well if I'm an idiot, you're an arse, for using a murder as motive to make a move for my girl."

Hermione stopped still in her tracks at this, though she kept her hands covering over her face. Instances from an impossibly short time ago were flashing through her mind: a conversation with Ginny by the Queddych pitch – Ginny wanting Harry – Ron not being able to speak to Hermione – Hermione being faulted for Ron's insecurities – Fred and George mocking she and Ginny both – Ginny laughing, Ginny frowning, Ginny being concerned and indecisive –_ Ginny now being able to do none of it ever again._

Beginning to sob in the sort of manner that makes a person's face screw up in the ugliest of expressions, while they gasp for breath - their chest feeling as though it might cave in on itself - Hermione also quickly found that she could walk no further. Standing completely still on the path, she found she couldn't bring herself to move along, and didn't really care if Harry and Ron also paused and stayed with her, or if they moved on without her. In fact, she thought she heard noises, and some part of her mind suspected it was their voices speaking to her that she heard – but, for the most part, everything around her seemed indistinguishable or unrecognizable in any sane way.

As it was, Harry and Ron were both speaking their friend's name, trying to gain her attention, to snap her out of whatever horrible state of sorrow she currently found herself lost in.

"Hermione, I'm sorry if I upset you when I said you were my girl – I know it was a terrible way to admit it –" Ron was saying, along with varying other forms of the same apology, all while he gently rubbed at the side of her arm, trying to get her to snap out of wherever she'd gone off to in her head.

Harry, on the other hand, had placed a hand at the side of her face, and was simply speaking her name, and asking her if she was alright, or else asking her what the matter was. When, after a full moment of her not responding to either of them her sobs only grew louder, Harry glared over to Ron, saying, "What did you _do_?"

"What did _I_ do? What did _you_ do last night? You were alone with her for who knows how long? All I did was tell her I want to court her – I told her how I feel, like you figured I should."

"At a time like _this_?" Harry exclaimed in reply, his eyes widening. "And you accuse _me_ of using murder for motive – are you out of your mind, Ron?"

"Stop it!" Hermione then screamed, though her voice was weak sounding, and cracked before it could reach a very high octave. "Stop it! Stop _it_!"

"Okay, okay, we will, we'll stop arguing!" Ron shouted back at her.

Smacking him on the shoulder with the back of his hand, Harry exclaimed, "Well don't _shout_ at her if she's already upset about us shouting at each other."

"Sorry!" Ron then hissed in a whisper, before placing his hands at either side of Hermione's waist and speaking directly to her in a calmer manner. "I'm _sorry_ – I shouldn't have come out and said it like that, that I like you. It just slipped from my mouth. I know you're as upset as any of us over what's happened to Ginny, Hermione."

"Stop apologizing. You didn't do anything," Hermione said in a quiet but thick-sounding voice, slowly lowering her hands from her face as she spoke; her pallid face now also sported swollen, bloodshot eyes, with puffy bags beneath them, even though she'd already stopped crying and was now merely sniffling.

"You look like you need some rest," Harry said to her.

At first, the girl was inclined to nod in agreement, but then she thought about the nightmares she'd been having the past couple of nights, and it was then that she recalled the nightmare she'd had in the few hours' sleep that had occurred while she lay in a bed asleep under the Weasley roof, recalling it suddenly, and with a feeling of surprise:

_The Thorn trees seemed to have almost closed in somehow, closer around Hermione as she looked upward. A new sight was present, from what she could see in the bleak, grey sky above her. Though the company of the growling, approaching creature behind her was gone, she now found herself in the company of birds. Making their little birdlike cries now and then, she watched as they flew swiftly by overhead, an alarming number of them together at times – while, at other times, only one or two flew by at once._

_It didn't seem to be as cold as it'd been before, when she'd last found herself here. All the same, she still felt a strange sensation in the pit of her stomach. It was telling her that she should not be here. It was asking her why she kept finding herself here; though, she of course had no answer to give herself._

Standing before their friend, finding themselves in an alarmed state once more, Harry and Ron exchanged highly concerned glances, before looking back to the girl standing still again in front of them, who currently had her eyes shut tight, her hands balled into fists at her sides as she trembled all over.

"One of us should go get help. Someone should go get her father," Ron said, sounding almost frightened as he watched Hermione slowly, almost unconsciously, it seemed, bite down on her bottom lip.

"I – I will," Harry said, before turning and taking off at a run, leaving his two best friends to themselves on the path.

In Hermione's mind, she was still lost in the memory of the dream, and now, as it had done so before, the climate turned inexplicably cold all around her, bringing the strange snow to appear beneath her boots as it did so.

_Crunch . . . crunch . . . crunch-crunch._

_The shivering girl slowly turned around once more upon hearing the sound of footsteps against the said snow, this time keeping her eyes open when she did. She felt now determined to see the thing that was evidently stalking her amongst these Thorn trees. _

Opening her eyes to find herself standing before Ron, Harry nowhere to be seen, Hermione stared back at him with a strange expression on her face. Of course, she wasn't really focusing on him, for even though she'd left her memory-wrought reverie, the image of a pair of slanted-pupil, yellowish eyes remained in her mind's eye, chilling her to the bone.

Turning, she then took off at a run, startling Ron, who called her name twice, before taking off at a run his own self, to chase after Hermione, even as she ran all the way off of the path and into the neighboring woods instead.


	5. Chapter 5

Ron was running blindly, this much he knew.

Though he'd taken off immediately after Hermione, a rather large tree root had caught his foot, causing him to fall forward and land on his face. Though the dry-feeling grass and the fallen pine needles had caused a slight abrasion to his face, he'd scrambled to his feet at once, before taking off again.

"Hermione? Hermione!" he'd called out, over and over as he ran, changing direction in concordance with sounds of far-off footsteps and the like, all the while as he inwardly kicked himself repeatedly for losing track of her at all.

Now, impossibly lost in the midst of the trees, Ron paused to catch his breath. "Where could you have gone?" he asked himself, hanging his head slightly.

It was then that he heard a very loud, startling scream from somewhere to the East of where he was positioned.

"Hermione!" he called out, even though his voice was growing hoarse; hearing a second scream, he took off at a full run, jumping over any roots or snarls that crossed his path. "Hermione, where are you?"

No answer came, but the redheaded young man continued rushing forward, pushing himself to the limit as he hurried forward, running on adrenaline alone as he knew he had to find her. He'd never forgive himself if anything harmed her. He had to hurry – he had to make it in time, to stop whatever might happen from happening.

_It's only daylight – the wolf comes during the waxing of the full moon,_ Ron thought to himself, and almost instantly, Hermione's voice filled his head, saying:

"_There's no such thing as werewolves in the first place!"_

A third screaming sound cleared most anything from his mind soon, and Ron pushed further along; this scream had seemed even closer than the first two. He must've been getting closer and closer to the source of the sound, he reasoned. "_Hermione_!"

Still though, she did not answer. No matter - nothing would deter him. Soon enough, he found himself making out the image of something in the distance – some dark, low-to-the-ground situated creature – an animal of some sort.

Reaching downward, Ron lifted a thick-looking stick from the ground and stumbled further along, before raising the stick high over his head. The figure of a girl was resting sideways against a nearby tree – she'd appeared to have covered herself all over from head to toe with her coat. "Oi, wolf – leave her alone!"

Ron took a quick swing forward, just as the wolf turned around and leapt forward, beyond the stick, coming to land paws first on Ron's chest. Being knocked backward in the process, the stick fell from his hand, where it landed off to the ground and just out of reach.

"Get off me!" Ron shouted at the animal, pushing at the heavy animal to try and give it off him; his attempts were futile.

Sniffing him over well, the wolf pressed its paws harder into his chest finally, locking eyes with him. It was a frightening sight, and yet Ron could do nothing except to stare back into the yellow, slanted-pupil eyes that were gazing into his own blue ones. With bated breath, he grew very still, and was nothing but astonished when, after another moment of staring him down, the wolf simply leapt off of him.

Sitting upright at once, Ron looked forward to see that the girl beneath the coat was still leant sideways against the tree. Reaching forward as he moved to get up, he called out, "Hermione!"

With a thud, the thick stick that he'd wielded moments earlier soon cracked Ron in the back of the head, rendering him unconscious as he crumpled to the forest floor, the world black to him in the course of a single blow.

* * *

><p>"What were the three of you doing by the woods at all?"<p>

Robere Granger asked this of Harry as the two of them hurried on their way back to where Harry was leading them. "We – she, Ron and I, that is – we were just coming back from the funeral of Ginny Weasley. Why weren't _you_ at the funeral, in fact?"

Shaking his head, Robere said, "I was speaking with my apprentice about ways to improve ourselves should another attack occur. Naturally, we both hope to the heavens above that this is not the case, but just in the event that it does, we wanted to be better prepared. Still, enough questioning _me_ – _why_ was my daughter near the woods with you boys after the two attacks?"

"We were just coming back from the funeral! We didn't think it'd be a problem. In fact, aside from feeling side over Ginny, there really wasn't much of a problem. Then, right out of nowhere, Hermione acted like she was starting to go _crazy_. I'm sorry to say it, but it's true, Mr. Granger."

"Crazy?" Robere repeated back, furrowing his brows as he glanced over to Harry. "How so – what was she doing exactly, Harry?"

"She – she stopped walking all of a sudden. Ron had just told he liked her – that he _liked_ her, as in wanting to court—" noticing an impatient expression on the older man's face then, Harry said, "And anyway – she just sort of stood frozen while Ron and I argued over whether he should have said that, and then she screamed at us to stop fighting."

"And did you stop fighting?" Robere asked.

"Well of course, sir. But it wasn't long before she snapped back into acting weird again. Neither Ron nor I could figure out why, or what was causing it. We figured someone should come and get you, so I did – I left Ron with her on the path. They should be fine."

"Well, be that as it may, I hope that all three of you understand that the woods are very dangerous right now, what with the past attacks being so recent – perhaps they were even _werewolf_ attacks."

"I do understand, sir, and I apologize, but . . . if this is indeed the work of a genuine werewolf, why is the werewolf attacking at daylight, and not under the light of the waxing moon?"

Growing silent, Robere frowned, and then picked up his pace to hurry onward to reach his daughter, thoughts of why in the world she'd suddenly start acting so strangely in the first place first and foremost in his mind.

* * *

><p>"Ron? Ron, get up! Ron, are you alright?"<p>

Beginning to stir as he lay there on the ground, Ron Weasley brought a hand to his forehead, and for a flitting second, he thought he could hear the sound of the thud that had taken him down reverberating in his memory.

"Hermione . . . ?" he murmured, his eyes closed as he woozily sat upright, the world seeming to spin whenever he tried to open his eyes.

"It is me," the girl answered him as she knelt down before him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Ron, what's happened to you?"

"What's happened to _me_?" he exclaimed in reply, before wincing. "Oh, what a headache . . ."

"What happened? Ron, what's going on?" Hermione demanded to know in a worried, raised tone of voice.

"Please, Hermione – don't shout – my head feels like it was slammed into a brick wall from behind. In fact, I think I _was_ hit in the back of the head – unless I'm crazy – that's why I was knocked out at all in the first place."

"But who would've knocked you out? And why were you in the woods?"

Opening his eyes again, despite how dizzy it made him feel, Ron frowned back at Hermione, as he lowered both his hands to the ground. "The real question is why you were in the woods. Why did you run off _into_ the woods, and why are you _still_ here, _in – these – woods_?"

"Ron, I was thinking about a few bad dreams I've had lately," the young woman confessed, looking quite upset as she slowly moved her hand from his shoulder, letting it fall down to rest by her side limply instead. "I suppose I got spooked – I, I'm not sure really; not entirely. But I just know that after I'd been running for quite some time, that I eventually came to my senses, and while I was walking back to find the path, I came across you lying here. I was so scared."

"Hermione, I'll be fine – I promise," Ron said, before reaching forward and giving Hermione a reassuring pat on her hand. "But what about you – are you going to be alright? What exactly happened to you while you were against that tree over there?"

As Ron pointed over toward the tree where he'd seen the girl covered up in her coat, he looked back at Hermione, only to find her looking quite confused.

"Ron," she said, shaking her head. "I was never by that tree. I didn't come any further in this direction once I found you on the ground; I paused right in this spot to see if you were okay."

"But – yes you were by that tree!" Ron exclaimed, shaking his head, before stopping abruptly, closing his eyes as the pounding feeling in his head persisted. "I saw you knelt there, lying back against it the lower part of the tree trunk, covered up in your coat. The wolf was standing here – it was going to go after you, but I got its attention, so it came for me instead."

"A wolf came after you? Ron, what were you thinking?" Hermione asked, her eyes growing wide.

"I was _thinking_ that I should stop the wolf from attacking _you_!"

Leaning forward, Hermione embraced Ron in a quick hug, before pulling away and saying to him, "It's noble – and wonderful – that you'd do that for me. But please listen: I don't want you or Harry or anyone else, in fact, to take that sort of a risk for me at all. I do appreciate that you would, more than you know, but I'd never live with myself if you did that and got killed, Ron. You're one of my best friends – and, and Harry . . ."

"Yeah, Harry . . . what exactly _is_ Harry to you anyway, Hermione?" Ron suddenly asked of her, feeling perturbed about the girl before him insisting that she hadn't been by the tree trunk, as well as for the simple fact that she took off on a run into the woods in the first place.

But before she could give an answer, the brown-eyed girl heard a sound of hurried footsteps, and she turned to look back over her shoulder, to see who had joined Ron and herself there in the woods. "Father – Harry -?" she said, moving to stand up. "What's happened?"

"What do you mean what's happened?" Harry returned, running up to Hermione and taking hold of one of her hands in both of his. "I was so worried about you. Why weren't you and Ron on the path – why are you all the way out here?"

"_Explain yourselves – all of you_!"

Also scrambling to get to his feet – some of his dizziness having since subsided – Ron soon stepped forward to join Harry and Hermione, the former of whom was still holding the latter's hand.

"Sir Dumbledore," Robere said at once, looking back to Aberforth along with the three teenagers, as the bearded and bespectacled man stepped up further to them all, a stern look in his eyes.

Looking from Robere to Ron, and then from Harry to Hermione, the younger of the elder brothers said, "How long have you all been in these woods like this?"

"Well, sir, Harry Potter and myself have only just arrived here," Robere answered.

"That's true – we came to find Ron and Hermione, both of whom I'd left on the path without the forest when I went to fetch Mr. Granger," Harry added.

"And just why were Missus Granger and Mr. Weasley in these woods?" Aberforth asked.

"I ran in here after Hermione did," Ron said with a nod of his head. "I saw a wolf, too."

"A _wolf_?" Robere exclaimed in surprise.

"Yes, sir - a wolf. It was over here somewhere. It came at me, but then it just . . . ran off. Someone or some_thing_ did strike me in the head though, and I passed out and didn't come to until Hermione found me."

"Right," Aberforth said, before making a motioning gesture with his hand. "We need to have a discussion, the lot of us. Come with me – we'll go back to mine and my brother's home. We'll talk there on the matter at hand."

"What matter would that be, sir?" Robere asked in a cautious tone of voice, as he and the three teenagers took to following after Aberforth, who was leading the way to head out of the woods.

"There's been another attack," Aberforth said simply. "Now let's continue on, _please_."


	6. Chapter 6

The tone of the village as a whole was quite somber.

The news of a third forest attack had quickly spread by word of mouth from neighbor to neighbor, although - rather than complete panic - a sense of sorrow also accompanied the feelings of distress. Three attacks in three days. Two deaths out of three, and now a pair of strangers were in town, as well. Even if these two people had come to answer the call sent forth by the brothers' Dumbledore, it seemed to heighten the overall suspicions of all of the townspeople to have them there at all.

More to the point, the villagers were alarmed by the fact that one of the two visitors was none other than the infamous Remus Lupin of the village of Melltith Olau Leuad.

"He's from a werewolf village, he is!" Ron said, now as he stood huddled together with Harry and Hermione around the back of the Weasley home. "Why else do you think the Elders dismissed their discussion with us and Robere the moment Lupin and Alastor arrived? They didn't want to take any chances about us getting proof of ole Remus being a werewolf in the first place!"

The three friends had been practicing their potion and polstice making for the past hour and a half, and though they'd gotten somewhere at last, the unexpected and strange frostiness of the weather was nipping at their fingers and reddening their noses, even though they had their scarves affixed about their respective necks.

"So you really believe it too, then, Ron?" Harry asked, taking a break from mixing the contents of the pot before him to instead cup his hands and blow warm air into them, to try to heat them up.

"Oh I believe it, alright," the ginger-haired young man replied with a curt nod of his head, all the while as he stirred the contents of his own pot with one hand guiding the ladle. "They never let visitors in to the town at night. They don't let anybody leave their rooms at the inn at night, either. Hell, I've heard a rumor or two that they've even _killed_ guests who've tried to."

"Why would they do that?"

"Well, isn't it obvious, Harry? What with them being werewolves and all, they can't let their secret get out, now can they?"

"Okay, Ron, hold on for just one minute," Hermione said; truth be told, Ron had been just _waiting_ for her to say something – anything - to let him know how wrong he was, what with her eye rolling and impatient sighs that had started and endured throughout his words to Harry.

"_Yes_, Hermione?" he replied.

"First of all, if an entire town would go to such extreme measures as murder just to keep a big secret, then said secret wouldn't be out and spread all around this half of the world, would it? _Second of all_-"

"There's no such thing as werewolves!" Ron and Harry both said in unison, in a teasing, sing-song sort of voice – it was the most precise sort of thing to do to get under her skin.

"Right," Hermione said in a tone that now matched the frosty weather as she resumed stirring her own ladle about in the pot before her. "Well I suppose we've done enough practicing for the day."

"No, Hermione!" Ron exclaimed at once, a worried look on his face. "We have our next lesson with Apprentice Snape tomorrow!"

"That's true," Harry added, placing a hand on Hermione's shoulder. "We need you to help us. You just _know_ Snape will give us extra difficult potions to brew in light of all these attacks, and the truth of the matter is, we simply have no chance at _all_ of mastering a single potion without the aid of your prowess, Hermione."

"Your flattery is not quite effective," Hermione replied, though her tone of voice had already begun to soften just a bit.

"Look, we're sorry for picking at you, alright?" Ron said - a pleading look on his face.

"We really are," Harry agreed, squeezing at her shoulder.

"Oh, fine - al_right_ then!" Hermione exclaimed. "I'll stick around and help you both for a little bit longer, but I do wish that this cold would let up, if nothing else. I'm freezing."

* * *

><p>"It is quite cold today here in Horthwarg. If I do recall, it is not normally this frigid so early on in the season, is it?" Sitting on a wooden chair by a window in the room of the home of the town Elders, the unshaven, middle-aged man dressed in raggedy clothes that had just spoken glanced from Albus to Aberforth, and then back to Albus again. "I'm sure I could be wrong, however, for I don't often venture so far as to come by this place."<p>

"No, Remus, you are not mistaken. It is normally not quite so horribly cold at this time of year – not yet, at least," Albus answered him, folding his hands in his lap.

"Aye, I wonder if it's of any significance regarding the full moon and the werewolf attacks."

"Now, now, Alastor," Albus then said, addressing the second foreigner in the room. "We haven't come to an absolute conclusion regarding whether or not these attacks have certainly been the work of a werewolf or not."

"We may as well have," Aberforth said, looking over to his brother with a serious expression on his own face. "The waxing of the moon – the location of the attacks – the severity and proximity of closeness regarding the timing of the attacks themselves – it all but outright _screams_ the work of a werewolf, Albus."

Shaking his head, the older of the two brothers raised a hand, before saying in a more calm and collected manner: "Be that as it may, we shan't alarm the people of this village any further than they have thus far already been alarmed. We have the Weasley's in mourning, and as of today's earlier attack, the family of Miss Angelina Johnson is mourning a loss, as well."

"Yes, it is a terrible thing, Albus, I quite agree," Aberforth replied. "And that is precisely _why_ we need to go ahead and admit to ourselves the full extent of what we are dealing with here so that we may handle the situation with a quick and thorough strike that will put an end to it all before even more attacks occur."

"If I may, sirs," Remus then said, slowly rising from his chair as he addressed the town elders. "It has been my own personal experience that no two werewolves will act or react in the exact same fashion as each other. Even if the last werewolf Horthwarg encountered was dissimilar to the possible crimes of this allegedly present werewolf, we must take into account two things. First and foremost, we have to note just how long it has been since the last attack, and, in correlation to this, we must consider just how much time changes everything."

"Am I to presume you to be saying that werewolves can what - adapt over time?" Aberforth asked.

"Well if anyone would know, it'd be Remus, aye?" Alastor commented in his growl of a voice.

"Thank you, Alastor," Remus said, before continuing on, "And yes, Aberforth – that is more or less the point I am trying to make. I suppose that a sort of werewolf _evolution_ has possibly taken its course over time."

"I have never had reason to doubt your word before, old friend," Albus said to ragged-looking man, as he himself leant forward, causing his glasses to slip down further along the bridge of his long, crooked nose. "But might I please ask if you have any specific reasoning that makes you conclude this idea of a werewolf evolution – if you will?"

Sighing heavily, Remus took his seat by the window once more, before leaning forward slightly and clearing his throat. "What I have to say won't be a comfort to anyone present," he began, before sighing again and saying, "Nevertheless, I have indeed noticed a trend in the upcoming werewolves born in Melltith Olau Leuad. I have heard tales of it in far more distant werewolf-dense populations, as well, I might add. It pertains to the so-called werewolf evolution theory."

"Yes, what is it, Remus? What have you noticed?" Albus asked most eagerly, whilst his brother and Alastor both also looked on to the haggard man with great interest, as well.

"The thing is," Remus said to them. "For a great many years we werewolves only transformed under the power of the full moon. Of course, we could take wolfsbane polstice to ward it off if absolutely necessary – but that said . . . wolfsbane is quite rare, indeed - as you're all aware, I'm sure. I myself was lucky enough to have enough to hold me out through my nights on the trip here, and enough to carry me through the nights to get back again. Though, I digress. As I was saying before, the trend I've noticed is that – as I said – while all of us could only transform in the light of the full moon for a countless number of years, it seems that some of the kids in the village are beginning to be able to transform during periods of full moons, even if the moon itself is not present in the sky."

"You mean to say, it can be _daylight_ and still they'll undergo a transformation?" Aberforth asked, looking quite alarmed.

Looking terribly troubled himself, Albus said, "This could verily explain how it has come to be that the werewolf attack took place today while the sun was still in the sky."

Nodding in agreement, Aberforth then said to Remus, "You said that it was children who were experiencing this phenomenon, yes? Precisely how young or how old are they?"

"Together with the council back in my town, we did clear-cut and detailed research on the matter, using records of birth from the last major census. We determined that it was occurring only in the townsfolk who were age seventeen and under. None were a day over seventeen, in fact. Why this is the case, we've no idea. But it's the best information we have on the matter."

"Indeed, it could be quite helpful," Alastor said, nodding a few times, before lifting a flask from his belt satchel and taking a long drink of whatever contents were contained within it. "We now know, for instance, that we most certainly have a werewolf terrorizing Horthwarg. More to the point, we know that this werewolf is between the ages of birth and seventeen. Even so, no baby or toddler is running around and turning into a werewolf strong and powerful enough to do all that this one's been a' doing. In conclusion, I say with quite certainty that the suspect must be at least ten or eleven years of age, if not certainly older."

Looking deeply disturbed by these revelations and conclusions, Aberforth looked over to Albus and said, "I know we'd rather pretend it wasn't the case, but it seems to me that Alastor has spoken just now of nothing but logic and sense. I verily say that I agree with his conclusion, brother – we have a powerful, ill-mannered and quite young werewolf on our hands, terrifying the whole village."

Nodding his head somberly, Albus replied in a quiet voice, "We shall convene before the strike of five o'clock this night. So let it be spread throughout the entirety of the village that all houses without exception are to send forth all their children, ages ten to seventeen, to be assembled for questioning and inspected by not only our council, but by Remus and Alastor, as well."

"If I may suggest," Aberforth then said, interrupting his brother. "That, actually, we _don't_ let on that our two invited guests will be a part of the questioning council. Our superstitious and paranoid townsfolk are a handful as it is without giving them further reason to get their nerves worked up into a panicked knot."

Mulling this suggestion over, Albus ultimately said, "You are quite right, Aberforth. We shall call for the children ages ten through seventeen to gather together by the stroke of five tonight in our own home. The parents are to be told that Aberforth and I alone will be doing the questioning and examining of certain circumstance. A lie now to spare certain chaos – though I am not fond of doing such a thing – can _still_ surely end up being forgiven in the end once it proves itself a well means to an end."

And with that, the assembly of the elders and their invited guests was brought to an end.

"I shall go and start heading door to door, to let the townspeople know of the assembly to take place this evening," Albus said at once, standing from his chair.

"Thank you for doing so, Albus," Aberforth replied, before saying, "I have unfinished dealings to take care of regarding the Lavender Brown girl. As for you Remus, and you Alastor, you are certainly free to do whatever you wish to now that you are guests here in Horthwarg. I do give you a word of caution: the villagers won't take too kindly to either of you, in all most likelihood. Do try not to take it terribly personally. You see, everyone is cast under a spell of darkened moods, heightened states of alarm, pestering paranoia and the like. They'll wish to dissect anyone or anything that is even the least bit different from them."

Giving a bit of a chuckle, Remus shook his head and said, "I shall be content to stay here for the time being, until the evening assembly. I'll make sure to make good use of my wolfsbane polstice in time for it as well – no worries."

"Aye, well, I'm in need of a good drink," Alastor said, getting up from his own seat. "I do believe I'll head over to the nearest by pub and have a stout one or two, as long as they don't mind me needing to fill me own flask from the tap."

"Alastor, dear friend, I imagine they'll allow all the flask filling you need to do as long as you're able to pay the tab you ring up," Remus said to him in a lighthearted way.

"Aye - no worries there, for I always pay me tabs," Alastor replied, before growing a bit more somber all of a sudden, a serious streak taking him over as he looked back to the busying Dumbledore brothers. "I needs me a good few drinks alright, to better clear my head and be ready for this five o'clock meeting tonight."

* * *

><p>While his younger brother was indeed going door-to-door, alerting people of the five o'clock town meeting of all the children of appropriate age, Aberforth Dumbledore himself was headed straight for one house and one house only. Once he arrived, he gathered himself and gave a sharp knock at the door.<p>

"Who goes there?" replied a woman's voice.

"It is Aberforth Dumbledore, Madam," he replied, and he soon found the door opening up before him.

"G'evening, Sir – do come in," the lady of the Brown house said, bowing toward the wooden table and chair set in the midst of the room.

"No, I've not come to spend company or have time for tea," Aberforth replied in a grim sort of voice. "Tell me, where is your daughter?"

Growing quite pale in the face, Lavender's mother drew her hands up toward her chin and backed away from Aberforth, before shaking her head slightly. "Why, she's feeling a bit ill, and is resting up in bed. I've put on a pot of soup boiling for her, to help her heal."

"There is nothing that will help her to heal. I believe you've already realized this," Aberforth replied; Missus Brown took a few, more hurried steps backward. "Now, now, I do understand that it must be a heart wrenching fact to face – to know that it'd have been better if your daughter had been mauled to death in the woods, rather than to grow so sickly, so slowly, over so much time."

"You leave my house this _instant_!" the lady replied, stomping her foot firmly to the floor as she threw her arms straight down, balling her hands in fists. "You're not taking my daughter."

Stepping up from behind the woman then was her own husband, who grabbed her by the arms, as if he were to frog-march her away to some place. "I spoke with the elders on the matter already, my dear," he said in a most cajoling way. "Lavender, as we all had feared, _is_ indeed turning. She survived her bites and our poor little Lavender is actively becoming what we feared she might even now, as we speak."

"_No_!" the woman cried out, struggling to free herself from her husband, who simply strengthened his hold on her.

"My _dear_, I am as heartbroken as you are, but these things must be done! There is clearly one werewolf loose about Horthwarg as it is – we can't be responsible for letting loose a second werewolf!"

Drawing all her inner strength together, Mrs. Brown broke away from her husband all of a sudden, dashing into the small room akin to the kitchen, where her daughter had been lying for the past however many hours, writhing in pain and burning feverishly.

The lady of the Brown house took only one glance at her daughter and then gave a scream loud enough to wake the dead. Lying on the bed, arching upward as she clawed madly at herself was the once-beautiful Lavender. Her long, blond locks of hair had gone quite gray and thin for the most part, and her eyes – oh how terribly yellow they'd gone – pupils slanted even. The lips – the once beautiful, many-a-boy kissed lips had now receding, revealing sharp, gnashing teeth.

"O Lord, have mercy on her soul . . ." Mrs. Brown murmured in a weak voice, before losing herself completely and fainting, falling backwards.

Her husband caught her just before she would have collapsed right to the floor. Aberforth, on the other hand, whispered a prayer. Then stepping forward, he took a wooden stake that had been coated with silver on it from the inside of his cloak's pocket. Aiming true at the demoned girl, he dug the stake in, striking Lavender right through her heart, killing her nearly at once.

Turning to look back to the dead girl's father (who was still holding up the limp body of his wife) Aberforth said in a most apologetic voice, "If there had been any other option, I certainly would have taken it. I offer you all of my most sincere condolences that you had to witness what you just did. As you . . . might have already guessed, I'd already sent an assassin to take her life more gently, before she began to suffer and turn, but it was thwarted by the Weasley boy."

Nodding, a tear-stricken faced Mr. Brown said, "I had figured as much, sir, yes. Might she have a proper funeral, at the very least – my poor, only daughter?"

Looking impossibly sadder, Aberforth replied, "In these cases, the carcass of the werewolf must be burned. However . . . we _can_ hold a funeral procession in her honor – we can bury her ashes." Then stepping forward, Aberforth placed a hand on Mr. Brown's shoulder and added, "I truly _am_ sorry that things had to be this way, Mckai."

"I, too . . . I, too."


	7. Chapter 7

Every single child from age ten to seventeen in the town of Horthwarg was gathered together, cramped like sardines in a can within the small, wooden house owned by the brothers' Dumbledore. Gathered together as they were – some sat on the floor, some standing and leant back against the walls – Albus, Aberforth and Alastor - three of the four proprietors of the convention - themselves stood before them all, the three much older men beckoning the whole lot of youth to please grow quiet, as they had many important words to say. Even so, the three older men also had another worry on their minds aside from the rigmarole the group of youths was causing – Remus Lupin, the secreted fourth elected speaker was nowhere in sight.

The absence of Remus from the assembly had not been a planned occurrence on his part. No, he'd been there along with the other three men, ready to deliver their questions and inspections of the hosts of children and teenagers, but then he'd watched one of the said teenagers secretly slip away. Whether or not it was a good call, it mattered little now, for Remus Lupin had left his post within the Elder House to follow along after Harry Potter instead.

However, as it was, Harry had unwittingly lost his follower somewhere along the sides of the woods. Leaping over a hard-to-see tree root ( a tree root that Remus would later catch his foot on and fall over), Harry had managed to push his way on through any brushes or obstacles, just needing to find Hermione, to see that she was okay. He _knew_ he'd seen Ron, Fred and George convened in the Dumbledore house, but he had not seen a single trace of Hermione.

"I'll go and find her – I'll be back quickly as I can!" he'd said to Ron, before slipping away as quietly as he could manage to, unawares of the fact that Remus Lupin had caught sight of his little getaway.

As for Hermione herself, she was once again caught up within the forest of her nightmares, running in a bizarrely straight line that still managed to somehow circle itself back around each time to the same semi-circle of Thorn trees no matter what she did or how she tried to turn away from them. Hearing the cry of birds overhead, the young woman slowed her running pace to a slow pause, before standing still - rooted to a spot of the earth beneath her. Breathing rapidly, she could see her own foggy breath as the already nippy weather grew impossibly more frigid all around her . . .

Yes, the Granger girl was caught up once more in a dream, it seemed. Though she and her father had been told earlier that same day of the assembly along with everyone else in town, Robere and his apprentice had gone some time beforehand to try and find some rare mint leaves and berries to better make new, stronger polstices, leaving Hermione all to herself. Though she herself had had no qualms about attending the convention along with everyone else her age-range and younger, she'd felt a little tired, as well, and had ended up falling to sleep by mistake while taking what was meant to be a simple rest on her bed before the fall of the evening would come.

And so, the brown-eyed, bushy haired girl was now trapped within her mind once more, tossing and turning and moaning even in her dreams, though within the nightmare itself she was still standing quite still, her eyes closed as the _crunch – crunch – crunch-crunch_ of paw steps upon incredibly icy snow sounded all about her.

"_You know what to do. You know what to say. Turn – look at me."_

Dream-Hermione flinched, squeezing her eyes more tightly closed. "I _won't_," she said, defying the voice.

"_Look at me!"_

"_No_!"

"_Face me once and for all right NOW!"_

"_No_! No, I won't do it!" Hermione cried aloud in earnest now, sitting up from her bed in such a flurry of distress that she nearly fell right from the bed itself. "I won't look and I won't face you! I won't do it!"

Hearing the distraught cries coming from within the Granger home, Harry ran sideways at the door and burst inside by knocking the front door opened shoulder-first. His eyes immediately fell upon a harried, crazed Hermione, one who was tangled in bedclothes and crying hysterically.

"Hermione, what's happened?" Harry asked, looking panic-stricken and worried sick as he moved over to his friend's side, his hands moving to her shoulders, before beginning to slide them up and down her arms in a quick fashion, trying to get his friend's attention. "Hermione, what's gone wrong?"

"I won't face you!" she cried out, before collapsing forward into Harry, whose arms slipped from their position to instead wrap around her to hold her, hugging her instead as she pressed her face into his chest, her tears soaking into his garment.

"Who – who won't you face?" Harry asked her, moving one of his hands up to stroke through Hermione's hair as she finally pulled back away from him, staring up at him with puffy, bloodshot eyes. "Hermione . . . you've had another nightmare, haven't you?"

"I'm afraid I have," she answered in a thick sort of voice, before clearing her throat and bringing a hand to the side of Harry's face. "But – but it doesn't matter now. You saved me from the dream, Harry. Honestly, you did. I know it sounds crazy, but, whatever was after me in the dream, well . . . it would have gotten to me for real, but no – it didn't – it didn't because you saved me . . ."

Hermione's voice softened and lowered as she continued on with her words, and she let her hand fall from the side of Harry's face, instead moving her hand lower down near their sides, to find his own hand. Taking hold of it so that their fingers could become intertwined, the brown-headed girl leant her face in forward closer, inch by inch more in toward Harry, whose face – likewise – felt inclined to inch in toward Hermione's in return.

"_There_ the two of you are!"

Slightly pulling away from one another's embrace, Hermione and Harry looked toward the left-open front door of the Granger home to find a haggard, worried looking man standing there, seeming almost out of breath; he gave them the impression that he must have been running.

"Sir Lupin?" Hermione said, releasing Harry's hand altogether as she reached down to untangle herself completely from the bedclothes she'd pulled from the bed in her panicked state from moments beforehand. "I presume you came to find us and lead us to the assembly?"

"Oh yes, you presume correctly, Miss," Remus replied, a slight hint of sternness to his voice as he motioned with his hand for the pair of teenagers to leave the room and move toward him. "Said assembly has been underway for a few moments yet. I followed you, Harry, when I noticed you'd slipped away."

"Oh, well, sorry, Sir – you see, I only was worried about why Hermione hadn't come to the Elder House, and-"

"It doesn't matter, Harry – it's honestly okay," Remus said, interrupting him, before motioning for the two of them to come along once more. "Let's just hurry back and get to that assembly before the brothers' Dumbledore recognize the fact that the lot of us are missing. After all – secret or not- _I'm_ meant to take part as an inquisitor in all this, too."

"Inquisitor?" Hermione repeated back, though she did as instructed all the same and moved forward, toward Remus, along with Harry tagging along after her. "I mean – do you _really_ anticipate there being such a thing as a _werewolf_ amongst us, Sir Lupin? Because, with all due respect, there's no such thing as-"

"_With_ all due respect, Miss Granger," Remus said, interrupting her as he paused in his tracks and turned, before then moving to push back a particularly longer piece of his graying hair to reveal a patch of skin on his neck; the patch of roughened skin sported a particularly nasty-looking scar, one that looked as if it had been made by the clawing of a crazed, mad animal. "There _are_ such things as werewolves, Hermione, and there _is_ unfortunately a terroristic werewolf present now, running amuck in Horthwarg."

Staring back at the scar on Remus's neck with wide eyes until the older man finally released his hair, to let it fall forward and cover back over his blemish, Hermione soon found herself taking two steps backward, pausing as she felt herself bump backwards into Harry.

"It's okay, really," Remus said to her, and to Harry, both, now speaking in a far softer sort of voice. "It happened to me when I stumbled into a town by the name of Melltith Olau Leuad at the wrong hour of night, under the wrong sort of moon . . . no worries, though. Naturally, as you may have guessed, that town has been my own home anyway, ever since."

Slowly nodding her head, as if to say she was more willing to either understand or at least accept the concept of being in the presence of a real, true werewolf, Hermione finally stepped away from Harry and began to follow after Remus again, with Harry himself tagging along after the both of them.

"I apologize for staring at your scar . . ." Hermione murmured to Remus as the three of them walked through the mostly-empty streets of the town, heading for the house of the Elders.

As she said this and Remus murmured a few words in return to assure her that it was no big deal, Harry moved a hand absentmindedly down toward his own abdomen, rubbing there just slightly. He felt a prickling pain sensation coming from somewhere about there, but before he could have bothered to say something even if he had wanted to, the group of three found their selves nearer to the Elder House. Many sounds were coming forth from within it, and none of them sounded all too inviting.

Creeping up to the front door, Remus cautiously slipped it open and took a peek inside. He, in all honesty, was a little caught off guard by what he saw.

"We're not werewolves! Not a one of us here are, you senile old bats!" shouted a young man of around the same age as Harry and Hermione.

"Mister _Finnigan_, you'll _not_ disrespect us in such a way – neither my brother nor I, _n__or our guest, Mister Alastor_!" Aberforth Dumbledore roared back in reply, even as the young man he addressed proceeded to climb up onto the platform that had been raised before the crowd of children in the first place, so that he'd be on the same level as the three elder men there.

Once standing atop the platform, the young man of the Finnigan household reached a hand toward the crowd, before taking hold of the hand of a young girl. "Hannah!" he cried out, pulling the girl with bouncy, long locks of fairest blond hair up onto the platform with him. "D'you believe we be werewolves?"

"No, no I don't!" she cried back, facing the crowd, even as more of the rowdier youths stormed the raised stage, as well.

"There are no werewolves here!" called out a dark-skinned youth by the name of Lee Jordan, who stood with Fred and George Weasley on either of his sides, both of whom were singing a song about the local werewolf legend itself:

"_O! By the face of the waxing moon - in the light it doth shine - the wolf that is man will stagger and swoon - transfixed by the light and heart filled with evil diviiiiiine!_"

Then bringing his hands together to clap along with the rhythm, George in particular called out to crowd, "_C'mon_ – everybody together now!"

And so the crowd thusly began to sing, almost as if each and every soul there had been overcome by a wave of heathen outburst and emotion. Those gathered together – whether just a child or practically grown – began to sing aloud and dance in a mish-mosh sort of way, bounding about into one another in a clash of a fashion.

"_Ye! By the full and the wax and the swoon of Her grace - the sky grows red with the blood from the flesh! Dare ye not to look upon Her face – the countenance that brings the hoOOOowl!_ a-HOOOoooWOOL!"

And at this, the ending of the folk song, most all present let out their dandiest imitation of a werewolf howl, indeed.

"E_nough_!" Aberforth shouted out over the lot of them, waving his arms back and forth whilst Albus – acting in a calmer fashion – stepped over to the magnificent fire bird that was perched near the side of the wall of the main room.

"Fawkes, my friend – lend us a hand – er- wing, I should say – won't you?" he cajoled to the phoenix, who gave a soft _caw_ sound and then flew up from his perch and took off in a circular flight around the room, spreading a fantastically threatening flame from his fiery feathers as he went.

As Albus had fully expected (or, at the very least, had fully _hoped_) the sudden appearance of all the flames throughout the air caught the attention of many of the rioters. Indeed, a few of the rioters themselves caught fire just a bit, though not to any severe degree. However, Seamus Finnigan would've liked a word with whoever had decided the small fire catches to be no big deals, for his very eyebrows had been singed off in the process of it all.

Feeling vexed with how his carousing had ended, the short-statured young man hopped down from the stage and then helped the blond-headed Hannah girl to do the same; afterward followed the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan, along with a ginger girl called Susan and a rather tall, handsome young man by the name of Cedric.

"Oi, we're _sorry_, Sirs' Dumbledore and Alastor – we really are!" Fred Weasley called out to the disgruntled trio of older men who now stood solely on the platform, glaring down at the group below. "We've just grown a bit tired of all these questions. I swear on my own _life_ that none of us here are werewolves – and I am willing to bet that any other of us here would be willing to put up the same wager."

However, before either of the Dumbledore's or Alastor could respond to this, a new crowd of people managed to fit their way into the Elder House, as well, forcing Remus, Hermione and Harry to do the same as they got caught up in the wave of movement. Shoving and pushing themselves in as well as they could manage to, the parents and guardians of the children present were now shouting various things at the elders and their guests.

"We see 'em right there!" a rather drunk-looking older man said, speaking in a voice that carried over and above the rest. "I see old Remus-Werewolf-_Lupin_ standing here wi's our kids! Whould'a thunk it? The _Elders_ of our own town letting our children be threatened in such of a manner?"

"Now, _now_, Mr. Parkinson," Albus said to the intoxicated fellow, as he himself slowly stepped down from the safety of the platform to be more one-on-one with the crowd itself. "Remus Lupin is of no harm to any of us at all, and certainly not to the _children_."

"What prove have ye of this?" the inebriated man then asked, and when Albus did not dignify the question with an answer, the tall, broad-shouldered Sinestro Parkinson raised his arms and rabble roused a group of fellow men that had clearly just been with him at the pub.

"If these old fools won't take our word for it, then we'll have to put our _own_ words into action!" he shouted, a slur to his voice as he rushed forward, hands reaching out for Remus, who instinctively backed away.

"Leave him alone!" Hermione cried out, moving to stand in front of Lupin, and then – likewise- Harry moved to stand in front of her, the lot of them backing in this way on out of the elder's house.

"You heard her – _leave Remus be_," Ron Weasley then said in a most unnaturally menacing way, as he himself finally moved to stand in front of Harry and Hermione both.

"Move out of our way, Weasley, or pay the consequences from us," growled a rather ugly, toothless man who was standing nearby Sinestro.

"You and what army, Amycus Carrow?" Ron returned, still speaking in his low, threatening tone of voice.

"Charge at them! Take them all!" shouted the voice of a female suddenly, and before anyone could make heads or tails of the situation, an all-out insurgence of violence was taking place all over the previously empty streets of Horthwarg.

Men hitting other men, woman kicking at woman, some mix-and-match and some vice-versa; children fist-fighting one another while their frightened mothers and older sisters did their best to pull them off of each other; the entirety of the situation, in truth, was nothing but a tangled, hellacious mess.

"_Fawkes_!" Albus Dumbledore cried out once again, and even though his faithful phoenix did indeed hear him, little anyone else could hear over all the goings-on. "Fawkes, work your magic – draw a line in the sand, as it were!"

Crying out in reply, the bird dove down toward the crowd and flew upward again, doing so multiple times until many of the rioters had broken apart to avoid the potential burns of its flames. When the bird was satisfied that enough room had been parted and made, it gave a second, even greater cry, and then flew so low to the ground that it appeared as if it might crash. However, crash it did not, and instead it left in its wake a literal blazing line – a line made up of a full-blown, four-foot high wall of flames.

At long last, something had successfully split up the fight.

"Thank you, my old friend," Albus said in a quiet voice to the bird, as it flew back over and perched on his wrist; stroking its beak with two of his fingers, Albus then said to the phoenix, "You've done extraordinarily well, Fawkes. You may go and have a great, well-deserved rest."

_Caw_, the bird replied, before flapping its fiery wings a few gentle times and then taking flight, entering back on into the house of the Elders.

"Hermione – are you okay?" The frightened and adrenaline-rushed young woman heard this asked into her ear not a full moment after the firewall had been made, and she gave a bit of a sigh of relief as she heard it, for it was Harry's voice which was speaking to her, and this thusly guaranteed her at once that he was certainly okay his own self.

"I'll be fine," she answered him, though she remained lying face first on the ground with Harry lying atop her, acting as a shield. "Though I think the fighting is done with now . . . you _can_ let me get up, Harry, if you'd like to."

"Right, certainly," the black-haired young man said, gently moving up and off of Hermione to instead stand, before reaching down and offering her a hand up.

Once the pair of them was certain that the other was alright, it was then that they took to searching for friends and family members. Hermione felt quite certain that her own father would've been nowhere near any of this in the first place – after all, was he not off finding herbs, leaves and the like with Apprentice Snape? Harry, on the other hand, felt blessed and grateful to find his surrogate mother Molly, as well as his surrogate father Arthur – for the most part – unscathed. The same, thankfully, could be said for Fred and George and Percy, as well, though one thing bothered the entire lot of them as the crowds cleared further and further away, revealing less and less people amongst the streets.

As many people looked for and happily found for whomever they'd been searching for in the first place, Harry Potter couldn't help but to feel a strange sort of lump begin to form in the bottom of his throat as the crowds practically died away completely, along with the flames of Fawkes's fire wall.

Looking around, the green-eyed young man slowly shook his head and said in a ghostly quiet whisper, "Where is Ron . . . and, where is Remus Lupin?"


	8. Chapter 8

"You'd be a fool to go out in those woods right now, boy," growled the foreign Alastor, who'd just taken a swig of some questionable-smelling substance from his own little flask.

"Well then a fool I'll be," Harry Potter answered him, as he threw his arms up into the air. "My _best friend_ is somewhere out there in the woods, missing!"

"Harry – Alastor, come now to your senses and realize that no one has said Ron is indeed lost in the _woods_ in the first place," Albus Dumbledore said then, attempting to reason with the both of them. "While it is in all honestly a possibility that he's in the woods – or even likelihood - perhaps it's still best all the same to not jump to conclusions when in fear at times like these."

After the earlier debacle had cleared off for good for that night, the Brothers' Dumbledore had asked Alastor, Hermione, Harry and the rest of the Weasley's present back inside their ramshackled but otherwise quiet and vacant home. The subject of the missing of Ron and of Lupin were on the minds of all present, and it seemed as if nearly everyone had their own ideas about where to look for the missing parties, and how.

"He's my own _son_," Arthur Weasley said in a proud voice, heading for the door. "I'll go and I'll be the one to find Ron."

"So I can lose my husband, too?" objected Molly, who latched onto Arthur's arm with both her own. "I think not. _I'll_ go and look for Ronald myself, if anything. I could never live if anything happened to rest of my family . . ."

"Yes, of _course_," George said, in a voice that dripped of its own sarcasm. "Let's send our poor mother out into the woods."

"All alone," Fred added.

"In the dark of night," George returned.

"Let's be _reasonable_ here!" exclaimed Percy Weasley then, raising his arms up into the air as if to grab the attention of the room at large. "We'll wait for daybreak and form a search party then, when we'll be able to see."

"Yeah, when we'll be able to see their dead bodies, maybe," Fred scoffed.

"I am _simply_ being reasonable," Percy returned, in a pretentious sort of voice.

"Well then, do us all a favor, won't you, and be reasonable enough to shut your mouth," George said to him, before turning to look at Aberforth Dumbledore. "Contrariwise, _you're_ being awfully quiet, aren't you? You were are well and good enough to run your mouth at us when you were accusing us all of being werewolves!"

"_George Weasley_, mind who you're speaking to and _how_!" Molly exclaimed, scolding her son.

"No – you weren't in here before, Mother, hearing him and his brother and Alastor, too, all asking us the dumbest questions – making the _stupidest _accusations."

"George is right," Fred then said. "The lot weren't just _asking_ about Lavender or Ginny or Angelina, and they weren't just warning us about proper safety protocol, either, like they assured you and Father they would – and probably all of the other parents in the whole damn village, too!"

"And heavens forbid if we'd asked _them_ anything in return!" George interjected. "I liked Angelina – I liked her an awful lot, if you'll care to remember –" at this, George paused, seeming to need to gather himself for a few seconds before continuing on. "And I lost her. I lost _her_ after I lost my baby sister, as well – and then these so-called wise and mighty elders have the raw nerve and the unmitigated gall to lump us all together in a room for one big heretical interrogation session!"

"_Enough_!" exclaimed Albus then, and at once the room went absolutely quiet as could be; this was owing to the fact that the more serene of the two Elders was virtually never to be heard raising his voice at all, so when and if he did, it certainly got him all the attention or generalized composure he desired.

Clearing his throat after giving his exclamation for silence, the elder then addressed Arthur and Molly Weasley, saying, "Your sons speak the truth. I do apologize on behalf of not only myself, but on behalf of my brother, as well as Alastor and Remus, as well. . .

It might have been an ill-advised, premature of proper-thought decision that the four of us made, when we decided to hold the convention we needed to under semi-false pretenses; but, we only did it all due to a fevered desire to sniff out the werewolf that has been terrorizing our village for the past few days and nights. And _yes_, there is _indeed_, with complete certainty, a werewolf amongst us here in Horthwarg."

A few quiet murmurs and exchanges of all sorts of varied looks ensued after this revelation was made, and it all ended with George stepping up and walking past all present to leave the house altogether. He needn't have said a word – it was obvious that he was going to take it upon himself to look for those missing, no matter who liked it or not. And though his parents called after him to come back, he did not return.

It was then that Aberforth, too, stepped forward, following after George's footsteps. Pausing near the door, he said to Molly and Arthur, "If nothing else, he has a point. _Someone_ should be looking for Remus and Ron. But I'll go with your son and make sure to keep him safe."

"Thank you – _bless_ you, Aberforth," Molly said to him as he left the building.

"Well, I'm going now, too," Hermione then said, approaching the door in a timid fashion. "I'm going to look for my father. I'm sure George and Mister Dumbledore will find Ron, and surely Remus, too, but . . . It troubles me that my father never showed up with, well any of the other parents."

"I'll go with you, Hermione," Harry then said, stepping up behind her.

"Are you sure you want to?" she asked him, turning to look at him. "I'll understand if you'd rather go and help look for Ron."

"Oh, I'll be going to look for him, as well, Hermione, so don't worry," Fred then said, before glancing back in the direction of Alastor as he remained sat in the corner, nursing his flask. "Say, do you feel like being a fool with me, eh Alastor? C'mon, help me go look out in the woods."

Growling a bit under his breath, the older man reluctantly got up from his seat and hobbled on over to Fred. "Aye, I'll be going with you then, I reckon. But we've got to keep a look-out all around ourselves at every bend, every turn o' the forest - _Constant vigilance_!"

Once Fred and Alastor had left the Elder House, Percy Weasley told his mother and father that he'd go and write at once to both Bill and Charlie again. It was his personal opinion that the family needed them both back home more than ever, and both Arthur and Molly shared his opinion in kind.

"Albus, sir," Molly said as third eldest son left through the door. "Might my husband and I please stay here under this roof tonight to wait for word on our son, should he be found? It might be much to ask, but I'm sure I won't be able to sleep at home anyway until I know that all my sons have returned here safely."

"Molly, dear lady, after all you and yours have endured as of late, of course you may stay here. If Miss Granger and Mister Poster still intend to go in search of Robere, then you and Arthur and I shall hold a sort of vigil, waiting for the return of George, Fred, Alastor, Remus, Ronald and Aberforth."

"_Thank you_," Molly said in a most gracious manner, before turning to look back at Harry and Hermione, who were both now standing by the open door. "Now, the both of you – _do_ be careful. Harry, I took you in at one year of age, and you're just as well my own flesh and blood son as any of my other sons; as for you Hermione, I care for you as I would my own d –"

Her voice faltering as she then began to cry, Molly – seemingly unable to utter the word 'daughter' – turned to Arthur, who wrapped her in his arms, before saying simply to the pair of teenagers: "You'll be fine so long as you look out for each other. Go and find your father, Hermione."

"Thank you, sir. I will find him," Hermione replied, before adding as an afterthought to Molly, "I understand what you meant, Missus Weasley – it's the same for me, as well, and besides, I'm sure Ron and the twins will be okay. And so will Harry and I – we'll keep each other safe."

Still crying too much to speak clearly, Molly simply looked up and nodded, before resting her head against her husband's chest once more. Harry and Hermione bid a farewell to Albus, too, and then they both went on through the door to the outside of the home, finally closing the door behind them as they left.

The night air was strangely still. Even the icy wind that came upon the village as of late seemed to have died down, solely for the purpose of alluding to the quiet eeriness that the nightfall had brought along with itself. The sun had seemed to fall so rapidly from the sky, that it felt nearly unnatural. Instinctively moving to stand in closer to one another, Harry and Hermione exchanged nervous glances, before looking upward toward this night sky, which appeared unto them as a glossy blanket of darkness.

"There's not even a star in sight," Hermione noted rather casually, her eyes moving to search the infinite darkness. "Not a single shimmer. At least we have . . . the moon." As she said this, she felt a strange shiver run up the length of her spine, before shimmying back down it again. "Harry, what if Remus Lupin took Ron off from the riot?"

"Remus Lupin seems like a nice person, Hermione," the green-eyed young man replied as he, too, gazed across the blank-looking heavens above. "I don't see why on Earth he'd take Ron."

"You saw his scar . . ."

"Scars are just scars. I'm sure he has Wolfsbane on him. What Werewolf, invited into a town full of endangered-as-it-is people, would come to the place without carrying along Wolfsbane? Ask yourself that and you'll have your answer about whether or not Remus Lupin transfigured into a wolf and dragged away our best friend."

"Harry, _stop it_," Hermione said, her breathing heavy as her nerves began to truly get the best of her. "I tell you – and Ron – what and how and why things are – so, how is it you have to do that for me now? Stop it, in either case – I can't stand feeling so insecure at the moment."

"I'll not stop it – you can't always be right, or sane, or know the right thing to say," Harry replied, slowly reaching his hand downward, until it caught hold of her hand. "You feel insecure because you're worried about your father, and it's nothing to be ashamed of."

At this, the pair began to rather quickly walk forward, hand-in-hand as they kept to the middle of the main path throughout the village. "And since you're worried about your father, I'm taking over the role of the calm and collected friend, while you are filling the role of the less certain, more anxious friend."

"Harry, _are we_ friends? I mean to say – _only_ friends?" Hermione released Harry's hand the second she blurted this out, and if truth be told, she couldn't even explain to herself why she'd blurted it out at all; sure, it'd been a thought bouncing around her head of its own, free will, but why did it possess such a poor since of timing about itself?

"Are you only asking because of what Ron said before?" Harry replied, letting his hand hang limply at his side as the pair continued moving along at their quickened rate of pace.

"_No_, I'm _not_ asking because of that," Hermione said, sounding suddenly quite cross. "Do you know what? Forget about it – I never said it – I never asked – therefore, you needn't think about it and you _needn't answer_."

"What's gotten into you – causing you to act so pushy and angry and -?"

"Harry, I'm just worried. _Where is my father_?"

"_I don't know_! Let's stop chatting about it and go find him, shall we?"

Feeling a bit startled by the quite rough way the only ever kind and genteel Harry had said this, Hermione bit her lip and folded her arms across her bosom, before picking up her own pace to walk even a bit ahead of him as they both continued to walk parallel paths, heading toward the Granger house. As they drew closer and closer to it, Hermione caught sight of a flickering light in one of the windows.

"He _is_ home!" she exclaimed, taking off for the house at full speed, and leaving Harry behind in the process.

As Hermione reached the door and entered on into her home, she at first let her eyes adjust to the dimness of the room, before glancing over in the direction of the lit lantern. Gasping, she brought a hand to side of her face as shock took over her body; stumbling backwards a bit, she didn't stop moving until the calves of her legs hit a low-level set of drawers. Sitting, though slumped over sideways on the spare bed, was the body of Remus Lupin. Though the flickering lantern was the only light in the room, it sufficed enough to show her petrified-looking brown eyes the sight of his slit wide-open throat, and the blood that had seeped out from thereof like water from the pump of a well.

She dearly wanted to scream, but found herself with no voice. Finally though, she was able to close her eyes and forcibly turn her head away from the sight altogether. It was then that she, at the very least, found her legs again, and she used them to run from the house as her voice caught up with her conscious thought once again, at long last.

"Harry!" she screamed, tears stinging in her eyes as she ran out into the vacant lot outside her house. "Harry, where'd you go? Harry! _Harry James Potter_!"

As Hermione continued to scream for her friend that was bizarrely nowhere to be found, people eventually began to come out of their individual homes, to see what all the ruckus and screaming was about.

"Oi you there, what's going on?" Missus Finnigan called out to her.

"Young Miss, what's happened?" asked Mr. Thomas, while his son, Dean, walked right past Hermione and on into her own home, for she'd left the door wide open when she'd fled.

"What's the screaming for?"

"What happened?"

"Oh, _more_ insanity, I take it?

"I thought all the raucousness was over with before!"

"It's the Granger girl – Lord knows _why_ she's screaming . . ."

"Well _someone_, make her stop!"

Falling to her knees amidst the chaotic calls back and forth from villager to villager, Hermione continued to call for Harry, even as her voice grew hoarse – even as Dean Thomas ran back from her home and loudly told everyone about the murdered body to be found within – even as all these people then _invaded_ her home, just to get a looksee.

"Harry, where are you . . .?" she finally whispered, before feeling hands on her shoulder tops; craning her neck around quickly, she said Harry's name again, only to give a start when she realized she was looking back not at him, but at her father instead. "Oh, Father – I was looking for you!"

"I'm right here, my darling, I'm right here," Robere replied as his daughter stood up and threw herself into his arms; hugging her tightly, he said, "I just stepped into the house – someone, well, quite a few people actually, said to me that you left from there screaming. Was it the body that scared you? Severus Snape found poor Remus Lupin like that in the woods, and he and I brought him here, before going to alert the Dumbledore's."

"How long ago did you do that?" Hermione asked in a suddenly demanding sort of voice, pulling away from her father. "You never came with the other parents at all. There was a riot, and I know you were off with Apprentice Snape, gathering apothecary ingredients. I know it's important, but you never showed even when most of the town did, and I was so worried, and . . . How and when exactly did you – I mean, when did all this all _happen_?"

Pulling his brown-haired daughter back into his arms for another hug, Robere answered her, "I don't know about any riot, but people – it seemed at the time – were all going home as the dark began to fall; Snape and I were carrying Remus back to the house at this time, you see. We knew he was dead – he was already in such a state when Snape found him in the first place, wherever it happened to be that he actually did find him, picking his berries . . . Well anyway, we put him on the bed the best we could and hurried off through the hedgerows to use a shortcut to reach Albus and Aberforth as quickly as possible to let them know of the apparent crime."

"Aberforth is in the woods. So are half the Weasley's, and Alastor," Hermione said, before raising her eyebrows slightly and giving a bit of a shrug as her father released her of the second hug. "But I suppose you know all that by now don't you, considering that you went and spoke with Albus?"

Nodding his head, Robere said simply, "Yes, he told me all this. I'm sure everyone will be okay who is out there in the –"

"_Okay_?" Hermione repeated back, interrupting her father. "An invited guest of Horthwarg was just murdered in those woods! And, and that reminds me – Harry's gone missing."

"He isn't quite missing," said another voice then, causing Robere and Hermione to turn and look in the direction of whoever had spoken.

On the tall side, gangly, and looking as if own body hadn't grown into his limbs and extremities yet, the brown haired young woman that spoke now walked up more closely to the Granger's, bowing his head as if to greet them as he did.

"Hello, Neville – I haven't seen you around in a while," Hermione said to the young man, who nodded gravely in return.

"My gran wasn't feeling all too well before. She's feeling better now though, thankfully, so I've been going out and doing my plant studying – you know, since I intend to one day be the town Apothecary?"

At this, Robere nodded his head as if he'd indeed known of Neville's aspiration; Hermione, however, had not quite realized it, and she felt guilty that she hadn't known it, for he probably had indeed said it to her in times past – she just hadn't committed it to memory.

"Well anyway," Neville then continued on. "I came out from around the backside of the house because Gran called me in – said it was too dark for me to stay out looking for roots and such now – well, I came around toward the front to go inside as she'd asked me to, and I heard footsteps – hurried footsteps. I glanced over and saw Harry Potter hurrying off into the woods."

"Oh, he must have wanted to go and help look for Ron as I suspected he would have . . ." Hermione murmured, before reaching outward and placing a hand against Neville's arm. "Thank you for telling me. At least I know where he went off to now, and where to go looking for him at."

"Oh, no you don't," Robere said, reaching down and grasping hold of his daughter's wrist. "Enough people are running around in the woods tonight, and the moon couldn't possibly be any fuller, either."

Naturally, this ominous way of speaking only frightened and compelled Hermione to want to go all the more, to search for her friends, but her father's grasp was firm, along with the tone of his voice. She knew what she'd be doing, which was that she – along with the rest of the town – would be waiting for the undertaker to come and remove the body of Remus Lupin from her home. It wasn't anything new to dreadfully wait for the undertaker to come to her home, for many people had lost their lives to too many maladies to count while under the roof of the sole apothecary and healer in the village of Horthwarg.

All the same, she didn't want to do it. With all due respect to the foreigner she'd barely gotten to know before he had succumb to a crude and unusual perishing, Hermione had taken her bait of waiting around for tragedy to find her that day. She knew she'd drive herself crazy waiting around, neither going into the woods to help search for the others nor trying to deduce the source of the lycanthropy that she at last had fully accepted to be the truth, despite her own best sensibilities.

Then it occurred to her – and it would further on occur to her that it should have occurred to her sooner than it had done so in the first place – that Remus Lupin was in fact not the victim of a werewolf, or even just a regular old wolf.

"Who do you suppose would have slit his throat open, Father?" Hermione asked aloud, looking up at Robere as he released her wrist and raised his eyebrows, appearing caught off guard. "I'm talking about Remus Lupin, Father. Apprentice Snape found him in the woods with his throat cut open – really and truly?"

"Yes, he did - really and truly."

"Well then who would have done such a thing – and why?"

Having overheard some of the conversation as he stood around outside nearer to the Granger house, Seamus Finnigan (whom still had the appearance of being slight singed) casually walked over to the Granger's and Neville, before saying, "D'you honestly need a reason _why_ someone would do it? I mean, I've got nothing against the man – er, I _had_ nothing against the man personally, not really – but loads of other people here did, didn't they? We've lost three of our own to a werewolf, and who should come to town but a werewolf from a whole village full of nothing _but_ werewolves. The motive is crystal clear, isn't it?"

Nodding her head slowly, Hermione looked over to Neville as he spoke in reply.

"My Gran said to me when Mister Lupin first got into town that she expected trouble on account of him being from the werewolf village, but she also said it was a needless shame that it had to be so. Remus Lupin, according to her, used to be nothing but a well-loved, befriended by all war hero from our sister village, Mosheadge."

"Is that so?" Hermione replied.

"Gran said it was so," Neville reiterated, nodding his head eagerly. "I've never had her tell me a story or lie before in all my life, so I'm sure it's true, Hermione. Of course, all of it would've been a long time ago, since she said he came back from the war ages ago, before my parents were even married yet."

"Did you know Remus Lupin back then, also, Father?" Hermione asked, looking back to Robere.

"I wasn't very close with him, but yes, I did know him. He was from Mosheadge, like Neville said, but he came here often. Well really, lots of people travelled between Mosheadge and Horthwarg at the time – there was a war going on, after all."

"You're talking about the war against Hager, right?" Hermione asked, furrowing her brow.

"Quite right, and a fierce and vicious war it was, though perhaps now is not the time to discuss its story."

"I understand," Hermione replied, before looking off to the side as a fair amount of noise and stirring began amongst the people that had since filed out of the Granger house and into the streets of town; the undertaker was coming, to remove the body from the home at long last.

"I don't want to be here right now," Hermione whispered to her father. "I've seen enough death, enough dread, enough –"

"_Here ye – there's been another attack!"_

Startled anew and all of a sudden, Hermione gasped and quickly spun round to face the direction that led to the house of the Elder brothers. Not caring whether or father would've wanted her to or not at this point, Hermione ran like the wind toward the direction from which the distressed outcry had come. Her heart felt as if it was actively sinking like a stone with every hurried step she took, willing herself to go faster, faster, faster still, all the way until the Dumbledore house was in sight. Coming to halt mere feet away from the front door, Hermione's view on the world seemed to then suddenly skew, fading into shades of sepia and rust-red as she watched the front door of said house open – out from within rushed Molly and Arthur, with Albus tailing after them.

Practically the entire village had run along with Hermione in the direction of the distress call – perhaps everyone except the undertaker, who had to stick to his gruesome responsibility no matter what happened. In any case, the situation was anything but a quiet one; hoards of people were calling out to one another as they watched the scene before them unfold – some were asking questions, some were demanding answers, others were outright confused and/or afraid, and were therefore making sounds akin to naught but mad gibberish.

Hermione, from her position where she stood, had a front row view to the situation that was causing the chaos just behind her. Loud as they all might be, from without the world around herself she had managed to develop a deafening silence which no voice could penetrate. Her best bet was to read the lips, or else the horrified and anguished expressions on the faces of the Weasley couple as their youngest son was carried out from the forest by Aberforth Dumbledore and George Weasley.

The handsome, humorous face of Ron was gone. It had been replaced with a mauled misrepresentation of his loyalty, his dignity and strength in the face of adversity. No matter for Hermione though – she wasn't looking at his destroyed visage.

She was seeing nothing but fragmented images of his face from her memories as they went off in her mind like flashes of a camera; she saw Ron's laughing face as he told bad jokes, or poked fun at Apprentice Snape right behind his back during a lesson; he was upset and looked morose over messing up the Keeper position and losing the Queddych game for everyone; he was gleeful and beaming from ear to ear months later, for having redeemed himself in front of nearly the whole village that had turned out for the Queddych Match of the year, by helping his team to win it; he was crying, weeping openly over the loss of his little sister; he was laughing raucously over Harry brewing such a wrong potion that he turned his own skin a temporarily shade of faint green; he looked disappointed with Hermione for not liking his admission of fancying her; he looked crazed at her for finding him knocked out in the woods; why was he in the woods then?

_Why had he been in the woods _now_?_

The world snapping back to normal all around and about Hermione all of a sudden, she stormed up to the body of Ronald Weasley as the obnoxious sounds of screams and outcries and murmurs from most everybody filled her ears, threatening to burst her eardrums. Seeing in colors that were now all too plentiful and vivid, she dropped to her knees next to him as he was laid out across the cold, hard, dirt ground.

"_Ronald_," she hissed, sounding angrier than she had in her entire life. "Tell me why you went off into those woods for, and in the middle of a riot, no less!"

"She's gone mad," Arthur Weasley said simply; Hermione heard him, but she didn't care.

"He is going to explain himself, Mister Weasley. Now good Lord, it makes no sense. No one very well dragged him off, did they? He's strong – he's big – he can handle himself and ten others if needs be, so _no_, he wasn't _kid_napped."

"Hermione, my _dear_ –" Molly said in an impossibly sad way, reaching down and touching the girl at her shoulders.

"_Please_," Hermione returned, shrugging away from the woman's hands. "I know you're his mother and should have a go at him instead but I have to know for myself why he was so _stupid_ as to run off into the woods like that." Reaching forward, Hermione then shook Ron's lifeless body at the shoulders, before smacking him gently on the shoulder. "Ron," she said, over and over again. "Ron – _Ron_ – stop it - stop ignoring me, Ronald Weasley!"

Suddenly arms could be felt wrapping themselves around Hermione's waist. Someone was taking hold of her and pulling her away, she could tell, even though she hadn't a clue who was doing it or why – wouldn't they, whoever they were, want to hear Ron's brilliant little explanation, too?

"Hermione – _Hermione_, come to your senses," the voice of the person carrying her off was saying into her ear, speaking in a soft, cajoling sort of way; it was a familiar voice – not terribly familiar, but she'd heard it before all the same.

"I – just – want – to – hear – him – ex_plain_," Hermione said in return, trying to struggle against whoever was holding her, though it was difficult – whoever held her was strong, it seemed.

"He can't explain – Hermione Granger, I don't know you well at all, but I know you're bright from the few lessons I've attended at your father's house – so you _know_ your own self that he can't explain."

"Oh and why can't he? Why are you making excuses for him, Cedric?" She said his name – Hermione had said the name of who held her captive, and so at last she clearly knew; the person dragging her off was the son of former naval officer Amos Diggory. "Cedric Diggory, why that's certainly who you are, and why have you got hold of me? Why have – "

Stopping her words abruptly as she flailed back against her captor in a particularly resilient way, Hermione caught sight of her own hands, the palms of which were stained with a color unmistakably the same shade as the color of

"Blood," she said simply, freezing in place as she continued to stare back at her hands, mouth slightly agape, eyes widened just somewhat; not only had she willingly ceased to move, but so had also Cedric ceased to move in pulling her away from the scene which was now merely a foot and a half or so away.

"_Hermione_," he now was saying to her, as he gently lowered her to a sitting position upon the ground, before gently removing his arms by unwrapping them from around her waist. "Your friend Ron is gone. Something's happened to him in those woods, and he cannot tell you what it was, nor can he tell you why. I am _sorry_ he's gone. I played Queddych with Ron and his brothers as well, and on more than one occasion. I am sorry he's gone, but he is all the same, and so he can't speak to you any longer."

Slowly nodding her head as tears began to silently fill her eyes, reaching the cusps of her lower eyelids before spilling over and streaming down her cheeks, Hermione clasped her stained hands together in her lap.

_"Well if I'm an idiot, you're an arse, for using a murder as motive to make a move for my girl."_

Breaking out into a sporadic grin as she heard Ron's voice ring out in her head, Hermione felt her heart leap upward into her throat suddenly. He had considered her his girl, and she had tossed his confession by the wayside as if it had offended the very fiber of her being. In an instant the grin was gone, replaced with a completely horrified expression, as the tears continued to fall.

"Cedric, thank you for telling me," she finally said, in a sort of far-off sounding voice. "I'm sorry that he's gone, too." Then raising her voice a bit higher, she called out to the Weasley's that were situated about Ron's dead body: Arthur, Fred, George, Molly, and now also Percy, who'd returned from his letter writing to find naught by a horrific scene. "I'm sorry for trying to wake him – if I upset you any more than you already are – I do apologize, but I thought I could wake him, you see? Do you understand?"

"Hermione, sweetheart," Arthur said quietly, stepping away from his son and the rest of his grieving family to kneel down next to the clearly befuddled and perplexed girl; placing a hand over one of her own, he leant his head in near to hers and said, "I'm going to help you go to find your father in the crowd now, okay?"

"Okay, Mister Weasley," she replied, still weeping as her shoulders began to shake a bit. "But do you forgive me? Does Molly forgive me for shouting at poor Ron like I did? I really just thought . . ."

"Shhh now, dear," Arthur answered, slowly standing upward and raising Hermione up to her own feet as he went. "Yes, I do forgive you – Molly forgives you – all of us understand that you were only confused."

"Why are you being so calm and kind to me?" Hermione suddenly asked with her shoulders shaking more, her breathing beginning to grow more difficult, the tears flowing more thickly and falling with more frequency. "Your son is dead – why are you not over there with him?"

"Once I see that you find your father, rest assure yourself I will be, Hermione, dear," Arthur explained, as he navigated her through the crowds of people, which were at least helpful enough to part ways and clear a path while they also gawked and stared at her as if she'd gone completely brain-addled.

Not a moment later and Arthur had indeed found Robere. Dropping his voice to a bit of a whisper, he spoke to him as he gently passed Hermione from his own arms over into those of her fathers'. "I'm no medic or expert of the psyche, Robere; that said - Hermione is gone in the mind at the moment. Surely this should pass, and quite soon, but the point remains that she is, at this moment, in a state of shock such as the like of which I have never laid eyes upon before."

"I'm just so tired," the girl murmured, feeling as if she needed to explain herself to Arthur. "That's why I couldn't – didn't realize –"

"Go ahead and get some rest, Hermione," Arthur said, patting her atop her head kindly, in a way he often did when trying to console or pet his own, late daughter. "I hope you feel better."

"Thank you, and . . . I am sorry for your new . . . loss . . ."

"Please . . . get her seen to, Robere. I know you're needed here by nearly everyone all the time for one malady or another, but she needs you most right now. Don't make the same mistake twice."

Feeling a bit stung by the particularity of the last of Arthur's words, Robere Granger cleared his voice and said, "Oh, do not misunderstand me, I am unfathomably sorry for your loss myself, sir, but please refrain from suggesting that I shan't take care of my own child's well-being."

Simply looking back at Robere for a few seconds longer, though saying nothing, Arthur eventually turned away, heading back for the inevitable horror of having to fully focus on the fact that he'd lost another child in a chillingly similar way as to how he'd lost the other an impossibly short time ago.

Meanwhile, amongst the mass of people, Robere was doing his best to guide his daughter away from it all now, and back toward their home. He noticed that she was crying quite hysterically now, though it was in a strangely soundless fashion, and if ever he tried to speak to her about the tragedy she'd just laid eyes upon, she'd not respond in any real way, so overall he found it to be pointless. No, there was only one person with any sense of expertise at all on the matter of trauma of the mind. Luckily, it was someone Robere knew and trusted quite well as it was, even if few other people in Horthwarg felt quite so inclined to do either, or.

Not only an accomplished apothecary as he himself was, Severus Snape was a fabulously accomplished hypnotist and thought analyst, and so to him Robere would bring his daughter, and unto him he would entrust her.

After a few moments more, Robere and Hermione had reached their home. The undertaker had long since taken the unfortunately slain Remus Lupin from its presence. Finding the door to his home cracked open, Robere poked a head inside, indeed finding Severus there, just as he'd thought he might. Putting away the ingredients he'd earlier acquired and placed into a waist-side satchel before finding Remus, as he'd so claimed to have done, Severus now gave an aside glance in the direction of the Granger's as they entered on into the place, before putting away the rest of the ingredients into the stock.

"Severus, I need your help in a most important, immediate way," Robere said, gesturing to his hysterical daughter with a nod of his head in her direction. "Please, whatever else you might have intended to do – put this priority first. She's – why – she seems to have almost lost her mind."

"A mind is not something that _can_ be lost, nor found," Severus answered, stepping away from the stock store and gazing back at Hermione. "It is not a book to be vanished by way of falling behind a shelf; it is not a piece of costume jewelry to be misplaced; a mind simply _is_, and if it is damaged in a merely emotional way, then it can be repaired, but only if treatment is applied in a likewise and practical way."

"In what way can she be approached then? My Hermione seems so _shaken_, after all . . ." Robere asked.

"She can be approached with whatever knowledge has addled her so; do tell me, what has her so shaken in the first place?"

"It was the Weasley boy – Ronald – one of her closest friends –"

"Another werewolf attack victim?" Severus guessed in a grim voice, before then saying, "Leave the girl with me and go see to whatever else you can do to help elsewhere."

"Alright then . . . Please Severus, help Hermione come 'round," Robere said, before bidding goodbye to his daughter and his apprentice both, and indeed backing out of the shack and leaving.

Stepping up to Hermione, Severus gave her a good look over, before saying, "You look dreadfully exhausted, Miss Granger."

Doing her best to slow her own crying, Hermione gave a bit of a nod in agreement, before saying, "I haven't slept well at all lately. I've been having these nightmares. . ."

Slightly raising an eyebrow, Snape gestured over toward a set of table and chairs in the corner of the room, suggesting that the pair of them have a seat across from one another. "You've been having nightmares, you say?"


	9. Chapter 9

Robere's heart filled with sadness and a recurring sense of guilt. Though his apprentice had suggested that he should go and try to help out wherever needed, he took a more self-serving route. After all, the poor Weasley boy was dead on arrival from the forest. Likewise he couldn't have done a thing to help Remus, either. As far as he knew, no one else was in mortal danger or otherwise harmed, aside from his daughter with her state of shock. Then again, he had entrusted her to Severus, who would surely uproot the primary source of her distress, where as he himself could not.

"Just like I couldn't help you . . ." he now said aloud in a murmured voice, moving to kneel down within the graveyard of Horthwarg, finding himself in front of a grave that was inscribed as follows:

_Here lies Margot Granger,  
>Beloved wife of Robere Granger<br>and beloved mother of  
>Hermione Jean Granger<br>Forever Missed Until We Meet Again_

Burying his face in his hands, the well-respected but haggard looking apothecary emitted a low sort of sigh. If the sigh itself could be allocated a title, it would have been identified as the Sigh of Unimaginable Despair. Robere couldn't help but to give life to this sigh with his own breath, for the unimaginable despair itself had been born within his very soul on the night that he had lost his dear wife in the first place.

Peering back at the grave marker through his fingers, he felt a strange breeze pass him by, and at once he was returned to an old, boxed away memory within the furthest corners of his mind . . .

**. . . . . . . .**

A much younger and less worn out looking Robere was sitting by his window in his home, situated before a small table that he often did his work at. With a stone, he crushed the juice from some freshly picked forest berries.

It was tedious and repetitive, and it took scores of berries to get enough juice for particular elixirs and polstices. Still – it was necessary. Too many people depended on the medicines he made, what with him being the sole apothecary in practice left in Horthwarg after his father had passed away two and a half years ago after suffering from a long illness. Naturally, he was glad his father was out of his misery, but this didn't dismiss the fact that he missed him terribly.

Robere had just crushed and drained two barrels full of the things when a curious breeze blew in through the nearby window. It felt strangely cool and it chilled him to the bone. Giving a shudder, he turned to pull the small wooden doors of the window closed. Before he could quite shut them his eyes fell upon a sight that caused him to stop mid-action.

Looking lost and a bit worried, a young woman dressed in an ankle-length dress of a periwinkle color was paused just a few feet away from the window, a small satchel clasped in her hands. She was on the tall side, slender-framed and fair skinned – but what really caught Robere's attention was the fact that most all of her light brown hair seemed to be cropped off. He had never laid eyes upon a woman that didn't have at least somewhat long hair atop her head – not in Horthwarg and not in Mosheadge. He ultimately decided that this woman was from another, more distant village than either of the two he'd ever been to.

And besides, she did look hopelessly confused about wherever she was trying to travel to. "Madam," he called out to her, moving from his chair to stand by the window instead. "Might I help you find your way? You seem to be lost."

"Well yes, I am actually," she answered him, cautiously approaching the window. "I came from Currerbell to travel here to Horthwarg in order to seek apprenticeship. Three years ago word was sent to my family by an ailing man called Edgar Granger. His letter said that his son would soon be needing help with his apothecary work. Since I've been studying the practices of apothecary – amongst other things – since age ten, I figured I'd give it a shot and come see if I could still be taken up on the offer."

"Huh. I see . . ." Robere replied, feeling a little caught off guard at hearing that his father had sent word to anyone on his behalf; certainly, Edgar had never told him that he had, though he could see why he wouldn't have bothered to – it was likely that the older man probably knew just what his son would have done, which is that he would have simply asked for the letter not to be sent, to cause no trouble on his behalf.

Yet apparently he had, by sending word to Currerbell, which – now that he'd heard it – did sound familiar. Now that he thought about it, his father _did_ have one family in that town that he kept in contact with. "So," Robere finally said. "I presume you're from the Riddle family?"

"Please, just call me Margot – I insist," the woman with the bobbed hair replied, before extending a small hand.

Taking hold of her hand to briefly grasp it to say hello, the apothecary then released her hand and said, "As you may or may not have guessed by now, I am Edgar Granger's son – the one in need of an apprentice. I'd quite like to have you as my apprentice. Tell me though, Margot, do you have anywhere to stay while you're here in Horthwarg?"

Shaking her head no, the brown-eyed woman replied, "I have a small amount of money in exchange for a room to let, though – if you have one."

"There are two beds in this one room cabin, but if that idea is uncomfortable to you and I can see why it might be, then just down the road there's a three-room house. The Weasley family lives there – Arthur and his wife Molly, and their five sons."

"Five sons?" Margot repeated back. "Goodness me, that's quite a large family, isn't it?"

"Well, the youngest two – the twins – are just infants," Robere explained.

"Oh, I didn't mean that I'd mind either way. I always thought larger families were quite lovely. My mother died when she gave birth to me after all, and then it was just myself and my brother after our father was – well, after he died anyway . . ." Pausing for a moment, Margot then said, "Oh, well I'm sorry – I'm rambling – it's a nervous habit of mine."

"I'm sorry about your mother and father – and no need to worry about the so-called rambling. It's fine. Besides, I understand what you mean; I always wanted a brother, but it was only ever me and my father. But then again, I myself digress. Never mind all that now. Shall I escort you to the Weasley's home? We can speak more on the apprenticeship once we're there, though I do have _one_ question."

"Yes, I'd love for you to walk me to their home. Thank you. But, what is your question?"

"Well, you see, I was only curious and wondering about why someone from your family waited three whole years to answer my father's correspondence? Not that I'm complaining at all – you are here _now_, after all – but I'm just curious about the delay."

"Right, well it was matter of both my age at the time and my brother's attitude toward the idea once Father was gone. I was just fifteen at the time and yes, I was practically grown, but my brother refused to let me make the trip here. He said it was too dangerous, though I think he didn't really care about that . . . Well it doesn't matter now since, well, he's left home now his own self, so I can do as I please, I suppose."

"I see – fair enough," Robere answered her. "What's your brother's name? It seems to me my father had told it to me once upon a time. I also believe the name of your brother was the same as the name of your father . . ."

"David's the name," Margot answered at once.

Drawing a blank, Robere shrugged and replied, "Maybe he didn't tell me then. David Riddle? It doesn't ring a bell. Oh well, it doesn't much matter." He then left the window and stepped on outside his house in order to escort the young lady on to their destination as promised.

**. . . . . . . .**

Finding himself in the dark, chilly graveyard once more as his memory faded away as quickly as sand crumbling into the crashing waves of the sea, Robere moved his hands from his face, only then realizing that had been reduced to tears – for how long, he couldn't be sure.

"Yes – it _is_ sad to lose a loved one, isn't it?"

Nearly jumping out of his skin as the unexpected sound of a voice speaking to him was heard from close by, Robere quickly got to his feet, blood rushing from the scare; he had, up until that point, after all, been quite sure that he was all alone there within the graveyard. Turning, he soon found himself looking back at a girl so dainty and so fair-skinned – what with her pale-blond hair and silvery-grey eyes – that he'd have easily believed her to be some sort of wingless, Earth-bound angel.

"Yes," he finally answered her at long last. "It is very sad and devastating, even after so many years . . ."

Noticing sadness come over the girl's face, Robere then wondered if he'd somehow maybe upset her. "I'm sorry," he said to her. "I was still lingering on with thoughts of my wife."

"I understand," the petite girl answered him. "I lost my mother just a few days ago. She passed away while testing out self-made cures for ailments. She used to come up with all sorts of medicines, you see. She was really quite brilliant. But then she happened to pick a flower that she hadn't tried to use before . . . she ground up its leaves into a fine powder, as she did with most flower petals that she used, and she then mixed it into water, dissolving it. She drank herself for she'd never have dared to give something to someone else without trying it for herself first – just in case."

The girl then paused, seemingly needing to gather her composure before continuing on. When she finally did, she spoke again: "Well after she drank it, she fell into a wakeless sleep not long afterward. She did groan a few times – it was as if she was having a strange dream or something – but then she fell quiet eventually, and she passed on to whatever life lies next while my father went to her medicinal store for an antidote. There wasn't one . . . and well . . . she never woke up again."

A most somber silence fell over the entirety of the night for both Robere and the pale girl. She had explained the story of tragedy so easily, and yet tears now surfaced in her eyes, tears that soon crudely crashed upon her cheeks instead of simply falling onto them like normal tears. Reaching into a pocket, Robere withdrew a handkerchief from it and passed it on to the girl so that she could wipe her eyes.

"I'm very sorry to hear about your mother," he said to the girl, who continued to cry without a sound as she dabbed at her eyes every so often with the handkerchief. "I have a daughter about your age after all. Say, might I happened to have known your mother? Forgive me, but I don't remember ever seeing your face around this village before."

Nodding slightly, the girl paused with her cloth dabbing to answer, "You might know her, or at least her parents. My father and my mother were both from this village originally, but they've been living in a town called Vagabonder for years now. I was born and raised there, naturally. Anyway, my father's parents passed away long ago, but my mother's parents – Philip and Beth Balthazar – they still live here. My father and I are staying with them until we find our own home, in fact."

"Oh _yes_ – I _do_ know them. Their daughter – your mother – she was a great friend of mine when we were children. Yes, Astrid and I used to play together all the time. Well, at any rate, again I'm sorry to hear that you lost her."

"And I'm sorry for your loss, as well – no matter how long ago it might've happened."

Moving to place a hand on the girl's shoulder, Robere said to her, "If I remember correctly – and I'm pretty sure that I am – your father's name must be Xenophilius. He left with your mother just at the start of the war against Hager."

"Yes, that's the story I've always been told," the girl concurred.

"Well come now, I'll walk you home to your grandparent's house. After all, the nighttime can be dangerous when you're travelling through it alone."

"I suppose."

"Either way, to introduce myself, my name is Robere – Robere Granger."

"Ah yes," the girl replied at once. "My mother used to occasionally mention an old friend by that name. "As for me, my name is Luna Lovegood."

* * *

><p>"In the dreams, I'm alone in the woods."<p>

Hermione Granger kept her eyes closed as she sat at the table in her home, directly across from Severus Snape. He had asked her to try to calm herself and meditate until she felt as if her mind was emptied of all the dreadful and chaotic events of the evening. Once she had done so, her father's apprentice preceded to ask her to think of the nightmares that she had alluded to, and to take herself there, describing them to him.

"Take yourself away from here then – this place of safety – this home, your home – instead take yourself instead to these woods, Miss Granger," Snape then instructed her.

Sighing shakily, the young woman inhaled deeply, before trying to clear her mind even further. After a short time she said, "I'm . . . I'm all alone in the woods; it's cold and no one is around – no one at all."

"Why is it cold, Miss Granger?"

"I suppose it's just the air. There's snow all around; I can feel it crunching beneath my shoes if I walk forward. It's practically wintertime here in Horthwarg anyway –"

"You are not _here_, Miss Granger – you are in the woods of your dreams."

"The woods here and the woods in my dreams are one and the same. Except that it's colder and there's snow everywhere."

"How are you sure the woods are the same?" Snape asked her then.

Keeping her eyes closed, Hermione said, "I just do. I've been there before, I can just feel it. It's déjà vu, perhaps? It feels the same way it does here in my head the way it felt when I travelled the furthest I've ever gone into the woods in reality."

"When was that?"

"The evening I found Lavender, sir – that was the time. I hadn't been so far into the forest before then, and I haven't done so since, either. But in my dreams, I'm so far in that I'm likely to be lost forever," Hermione answered, sounding a bit fearful despite the fact that she was indeed not actively lost in any woods at all.

"Go back there then, in your mind," Snape said. "Become immersed in the trees – tell me aloud all that you see, hear, feel; no matter how strange it seems or how uncertain of it you may be."

"Why is all of this necessary?" Hermione asked, opening her eyes. "My nightmares are frightening enough when I'm in them for real."

Rather than answering the girl, Snape remained quiet as he looked back at the young woman, answering her with a look that told her not to question his authority. She closed her eyes once again and paused for a moment. "I'm in the woods all alone, and there's snow everywhere."

"Walk further ahead – and again, be sure to speak of everything you notice, Miss Granger," Snape said to her.

Swallowing loudly and growing a bit jittery with a case of bad nerves, the brown-haired girl was quiet for a moment as she imagined herself walking forward. "The snow's crunching beneath me with every step. The trees seem impossibly tall. They almost conceal the sky above."

"Is it night or day?"

"I cannot tell. The sky is a mix of scarlet and grey and I can't make heads or tails if it's early morning or early evening. I just know it's impossibly colder the further I walk, and some of the trees are thinner and shorter, though the taller ones still keep much of the sky eclipsed." Hermione slightly bit on her lower lip after she said all this, before murmuring, "I'm at the Thorn trees again."

"What Thorn trees, Miss Granger?" Snape asked him in a sharp voice.

"There are a lot of them; they keep growing in closer and closer around me until I can't walk away from them no matter what I do. They're all around me now, even if I turn to look back. It's all concealed sky and Thorn trees, sir."

"All of this frightens you?"

When Hermione nodded her head, the apprentice asked, "Why does it frighten you so much? It's only trees, snow, perhaps a bleak sky. One could venture to guess that being lost amongst it all is arguably alarming, yet . . . you navigated the woods so well before, as you said your own self. You found Lavender and came back, all within enough time to save her life from her initial attack. _Evidently_, Miss Granger, you either have remarkably grand fortune or else, perhaps, you know the forest far better than you profess to know it."

"Well . . . I've never seen the Thorn trees in real life. . . before," Hermione said, though a hint of uncertainty was now in her voice. "They're all around me, in either case, and I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. I want to leave."

"Then leave," Snape suggested to her.

"But I just told you that the Thorn trees are all around me. No matter which way I turn, there's no way out of them or through them."

Snape remained silent at this, simply observing Hermione as she gave another shaky sigh, before licking at her lips in a nervous sort of way. Her hand laid flat atop the table sported white knuckles. She was indeed doing an amazing job of frightening herself, he concluded, but he still wasn't sure what inspired her dread so profoundly.

"I hear the birds now. Those loud birds – they fly overhead and the flapping of their wings mocks me. They can leave – they can fly away. I'm lost; I'm alone; I can't leave."

"Look up at what you can see of the birds – tell me what they look like, Miss Granger."

Tilting her head upward slightly even as she kept her eyes closed, Hermione said, "They're strange - dull brown and the size of a sparrow, if that. I don't know that I've seen them before. They're swooping downward now. I feel like I should duck down away from them – I don't want them to strike me."

"Why would they strike you? Is it all that dark within the woods, Miss Granger?"

"No it isn't. They're just flying so low now – swooping in and . . ."

Letting her voice fall into silence, Hermione visibly winched as her hand grasped at the edge of the table, before relaxing as she opened her eyes. "I'm finished here, speaking of these things, with all due respect, sir, of course."

"What happened to make your decision so certain, all so suddenly?" Snape asked her with great curiosity in his voice.

"One of the little birds flew right into one of the trees – onto one of the thorns. I'm uncertain why it's so upsetting to me, but it is."

"I can see so, Miss Granger – you look as if you're about to come to tears over it. You have no idea why it's so horrifically unsettling to you?"

"No, sir, I don't," Hermione answered, her bottom lip quivering.

"There was a great friend of mine once upon a time ago who dreamt of birds that flew into trees, effectively ending their short-lived lives," Snape said to her, a rather somber expression on his face now. "Her dreams were not identical to yours. Her birds merely struck the branches and fell to the ground. Nevertheless, her birds died all the same."

"Did she ever come to find out why she dreamt of them?" Hermione asked, a tangle of nerves in her stomach causing her to develop a stomach ache.

"If she ever did, she never let me know. However, I did have my own suspicions as to why her birds acted in such a way. I suspected they did so because they felt a certain amount of guilt over something. Even if they weren't very clear to themselves about their guilt – after all, they were just thoughtless birds – I supposed they had acted in such a way due to said guilt."

"I don't quite understand –" Hermione began to say, but Severus Snape cut her off.

"I think you do, Miss Granger," he said, his voice growing sharp again.

Exchanging glances with him, the young woman paused for a moment and then said, "Well, if anything, I suppose I could imagine that if the birds felt guilt that it was really your friend feeling the guilt. So it came out in her dreams. I just didn't think I should assume she was guilty of anything, especially since I don't know who she was."

"It's no mere assumption, Miss Granger. This friend confided in me all of her secrets. I knew the source of her guilt. Therefore, I could well come to a conclusion regarding a reason behind the birds in her dreams."

"You said you never knew if she came to a conclusion for her own self about the birds, though . . . do you mean to say you had an idea about the cause yet never suggested it to her?"

"The reasoning is simple enough, Miss Granger. You – in not even knowing of whom I speak – didn't want to jump to conclusions about how she might've felt. Consider my position, if you will. I considered her my dearest and most treasured friend – why would I have so carelessly thrown her darkest secret in her face, bringing it to the surface when she seemed to be so much happier not thinking about it at all?"

"I understand. If I had thought on the matter in that light, I wouldn't have deemed any bit of it questionable at all . . . except for _one_ little thing, sir." Hermione hesitated for a moment and then said, "You've said more words to me just now than all the words you've ever previously said to me altogether. If it's not too much to do so, may I ask why you're suddenly more willing to volunteer your thoughts."

"My friend and I, we – parted ways – and it was without me ever deciding to help her put an end to her sad dreams that she left. As it is now, I owe you no great favors, Miss Granger, but I do owe your father for giving me a chance on my return to Horthwarg, when I needn't even take consensus to know that no one else here would've done so. He gave me a chance to put my skills into practice years ago, even if it is still under the title of apprentice."

"So then, you _will_ help me, sir?" Hermione asked.

"I will try to. Though it cannot be done in a single nights' time, most likely; it will also require you to be unflinchingly forthcoming with regards to just about anything I might ask you. I won't venture to purge you of unnecessary information, and I'll not let slip what you say to me. But any sense of self pride regarding long kept secrets will have to step aside, in either case."

"I understand," Hermione said, before bringing a hand to her face; her skin felt clammy, and she didn't feel well overall. "I'll work with you in whichever way it's necessary to. Just not now; like you said, it's not possible to do in a nights' time. I want to try to sleep now; though, I do wish I knew if Harry is alright. He went off into the woods earlier, and considering what happened to Ron . . ."

"Harry went off into the woods earlier, you say?" Snape replied, before saying, "Well, go ahead and try to rest, Miss Granger. I'm almost quite sure that Mister Potter will end up being found alive and well, so you almost certainly needn't worry so about him."


	10. Chapter 10

**Just wanted to say thank you to the people who've read/are reading this and thanks for any past/future reviews! I've been ridiculously busy. I apologize for the non-updates from me. Nontheless, as for reviews/views/comments - It is all much appreciated :D Now on with the chapter!  
><strong>

* * *

><p>The early morning hour was cold and silent as a long-nosed man with greasy-looking black hair sat alone in his one-room cabin, perfectly still and miserable-looking there in the sole chair of his small dwelling. Though comparatively tiny, amongst even other bachelor homes, it did have at least two windows to call its own, and they were forever open save for windy days that also happened to carry rain amongst their breezes.<p>

The consistently fresh air – so Severus Snape was convinced – kept him healthy year-round; the problem with the rain that could come with the winds was its tendency to dampen his few but cherished personal affects. As it was now, the chill from the world beyond the house itself was blatant with its subfreezing potential for the next few hours but not a drop nor flake of precipitation was within distance of sight or sound, so the socially inept apothecary kept his windows as they most always were as he gazed down at a piece of parchment that was _just_ visible in the firelight coming from his mantelpiece.

A notably sad expression was on his face as he stared down at this parchment; it is worth mentioning because it was sadness in its strangest form, which is of course the form of a smile. "_Lily_ . . ." he said quietly, reading the name found on the back of the paper, before turning it over to its front side, noting to himself how worn-out and crease-marked the letter had become over the years.

_To Sev, my dearest friend_, it began, and what was left of his sad smile soon faded from his face as he began to read on for the second-hundredth time in the many years since he'd resorted to rereading his correspondence with Lily just to keep his memories of her crisp and painfully vivid – just as he ought they deserved to be; it worked, for he could recall, still to this day, the very morning he'd received this letter with clear cognition.

He'd been working on improving a few tried and true polstices that other apothecaries had been putting into practice for years when the unexpected arrival of a postman had interrupted him by way of knocking on his door . . .

. . . . . . . .

"Are you sure you haven't gotten the wrong address?" Asked a thin, pale-skinned young man with slick, long black hair as he fished around for a coin from his pocket to hand over in exchange for a letter that was currently being held in the hand of a postman; it was a letter which was neatly tied with a bit of green ribbon. "Really – I _never_ get any letters from anyone anymore."

"You _are_ the only man by the name of Severus Snape here in all of Hager," the young, newly-appointed and hopelessly unconfident looking postman said, before blundering a bit and adding, "er, I mean – you _do_ know a Lily Potter from Horthwarg, don't yo –"

"Of course I know a Lily!" Severus then exclaimed at once, grabbing the letter from the man (who flinched visibly at his reaction, startled) before giving him not one but two coins in return as he retreated into his home and said, "Why didn't you just tell me the name of sender in the first place?"

And with that, the door was swiftly closed in the postman's face. The postman looked down at the extra coin in his hand and smiled as he turned and walked onward to his next destination, even if he felt he couldn't be sure if the extra tip was given out of either kindness or madness from the strange man in the little apartment-house.

Within said dwelling, the surprised-looking Snape gently untied the ribbon and set it atop his work table before reading the official, postman-scribbled name and return address of Lily Potter on one side of the paper, before turning it over and then smiling as his dark eyes fell upon a more familiar looking handwriting.

_from Lily_

She'd fashioned the dot of her _i_ in the form of a small flower quite neatly, he saw, and so he continued to smile as he unfolded the parchment further, for – he thought – the flower was exactly like something Lily would make. Soon enough, he had the letter completely straightened out before him, and he read the words that were as follows:

_To Sev, my dearest friend:  
>I'm giving in and writing to you now after the cold, harsh winter spent here in Horthwarg – a winter I spent all season long hoping to myself that you'd certainly return from Hager at long last, back to here - your true home - once spring began to bring forth its flowerbuds upon the ground.<br>. . . A year goes by no doubt as you now read my words – a full year away from Horthwarg – and I can't talk about it, about all my hoping in vain for some alternate outcome to be born of our prior altercation, Severus.  
>I find myself on this early spring morning filled with a sense of urgency to make amends with you; in being fully honest, I have to admit that when I mentioned my urgency to see you again to James, he disagreed with it; but who can come between my closest friend and me? Certainly not James, him being my husband or not – and if not him, then the answer is no one.<br>I hope that those words have gotten you to see the serious notion I take in asking you to please, please, please come back to Horthwarg now. I need my best friend – I always have and, especially now . . . I do more than ever before, Sev. _

_I miss you. Listen to the words of this letter – please?  
>Love, Lily<em>

Folding the paper to the way it'd arrived to him in the first place, Snape carefully placed it into the pocket of his frock, before turning around to face his work table. He looked from the freshly pruned berries to the equally fresh ground leaves – they were both a days' worth of gathering combined, and a few hours' worth of hard work to get to the level of perfection he sought for them. It was very important to him that the ingredients reach this certain perfection equally – always, every time without fail – before being mixed together, in order to make a poulstice of only the finest quality man can make, sell or buy.

It was his work, his pride and source of fulfillment. It had been his whole life – his life after Lily had deemed him an unforgivable, irredeemable soul. Truly, at the time that came after their confrontation, he had found that he could hardly disagree with her on the matter. Yet now . . . _now_ Lily had decided that maybe, just maybe, their friendship wasn't so irretrievable after all. Maybe he had a chance to be part of her life once more.

Feeling the slightest of strains in his face, Snape soon came to realize that the slight pain he now felt in his lower face came from the smile that would not leave his face – he had grown accustom to just not smiling anymore. Really, what reason had he to do so in the first place? He tended to often please the aristocrat he presently worked for by way of manufacturing poulstices for him to send to the local armed forces camp of Hager, which incorporated the troops of both Hager itself as well as two other, neighboring towns. That didn't require any smiling.

This, despire the fact that, _truly_, Mister Riddle had done Severus a great service in offering him a rent-free stay in the apartment-house adjacent his own, grand residency there in the center of Hager itself. All he had to do was to do what he already loved to do: practice his apothecary skills; why, he got to hone and refine his skill both in lieu of rent and for profit, for Mister Riddle also paid him a weekly stipend, to boot. He had every reason in the world to smile, and to smile often.

But he did not have Lily. Hence, he never saw a reason fit enough to make him smile, regardless of how fortunate his circumstances were.

"Ah, _Severus_!" a charming, deep voice then said to the preoccupied man, causing him to quickly turn and look around to look at who had spoken to him. "You've gotten in _quite_ the amount of work done today yet, I see!"

"Yes, sir, I've gotten quite a bit done this morning, if I do say so myself," Snape returned, bowing his head briefly to greet the shorter, though healthier looking young man that had just entered on into the room with him, via a door that led from the manor into the apartment-house itself.

Smiling in a smug but also amiable way, the wavy-haired, handsome man of nobility folded his arms over his chest as he nodded his head in the direction of the apothecary's work table, before saying, "Truly, even in all the years I myself practiced the apothecary skill, I never could produce a finer potion myself no matter how long I tried."

"Why, thank you, sir," Severus replied; the smile the letter had afforded him had since disappeared, though his heart still felt lighter than it had in ages – as did, if he was feeling honest, his head; what to do with this request of Lily – throw this life in Hager away, return to Horthwarg knowing that no one would take kindly to the move other _than_ Lily?

It didn't take him quite the entirety of the blink of an eye to make up his mind on the matter. This fact both did and did not frighten him. It did because he was a man of precise decisions, who took longer than anyone else he personally knew to come to a decision, putting off major decision making for as long as he could afford to do so. At the same time it did not, because it was perfectly obvious to him what he should do, and shame on him for trying to pretend he did not know in the first place.

"Sir . . ." he began, speaking again to the lord of the manor. "I received a letter from my hometown this day. I've been requested to return at once, because I'm needed there as soon as I can get there, and so, though I had no means to give you a notice that I'd be taking leave from the position you've given me so quickly, I'm afraid that I must let you know about it now at least. I'll finish making this poulstice, naturally, and then I'll be packing up what little I have and I'll be leaving, sir, though I do appreciate the opportunity you given me for almost this entire year past."

Once Snape had finished giving Mr. Riddle his rambling explanation for a sudden leave of absence, he looked back at the perpetually handsome-faced man to find that next to every trace of said handsomeness had disappeared in a most disturbing way. The pupils of his eyes seeming to contract into naught but pinpricks as his folded arms soon turned into a gesture of haughtiness and hostility, the nobleman said simply, "So I see."

". . . _truly_, had I been able to give you sooner notice, I'd have –"

"Your choice is not as simple as you seem to think it is, Apothecary," Riddle replied in an emotionless tone of voice. "For you _seem_ to think that I will tolerate a years' worth of work in exchange for a perpetual relationship that it is at least on friendly terms, am I right?"

"Well, I –"

"If I _am_ right, then I must inform you that you are incorrect. You choose not a mere new, fresher residency now – you choose your loyalty to me in one way or the other. I am orchestrating a forge of nations – building a tri-nation army that will soon be fit enough to bring trepidation to those who think of opposing me, as well as forthright destruction to those who _dare_ to actively do so."

When Severus said nothing to this, the nobleman said, in an impossibly colder way, " . . . I see then. You've made your decision already after recieving this . . . _letter_ . . . haven't you?"

Glancing down toward the ground, feeling surprised if not a little frightened by the reaction he'd received from his news, Severus soon glanced upward again to watch as Riddle moved over to the work table there in the room, before taking his hand and callously swiping everything from said table except for the already readied ingredients. The green ribbon was part of the debris carelessly put to the floor amongst all else.

"Take your things and get out then – you have no more business being here," Riddle said in a calmer, but still perfectly clear tone of voice. "I'll finish up making this poulstice."

It was easy enough, really. Severus had always kept what few changes of clothes he had neatly kept together in a small suitcase beneath the single bed in the apartment-house. Retrieving it and deciding to call the laundry to be left behind a loss and leave it at that, he then politely approached the area near the work table, intending to retrieve the piece of green ribbon. He had soon retrieved it, and was at the door to leave when Riddle spoke to him one final time.

"The second you cross the threshold is the second that a line is drawn between us – do not underestimate, and certainly never forget this fact."

"Yes, sir," Severus said quietly, slipping the green ribbon into his frock pocket before crossing the threshold with a certain sense of apprehension.

He'd eventually make the entire journey back to Horthwarg wearing that same frock almost the entire way. He only dared to stop for a true nights' rest and a bath at an inn once he'd reached Horthwarg's sister city of Mosheadge, where, once there, he spent two full days and nights.

While there it was when he heard news of the declaration of war from the Confederate Nations of Hager against Mosheadge and Horthwarg itself. He'd figured, as he took off for the hours' long trip to Horthwarg itself, that he perhaps should have seen it coming in hindsight. Tom Riddle – travelling to first Linata and winning them over for the cause; travelling _then_ to Kormokrev to the north of Hager and winning them over, also - it was probably no more of a winning-over speech than the goodbye speech he'd personally given Snape himself (with his pinprick eyes and cold voice in tow, even, most likely).

He could now – and to think, with so much _ease_! – imagine Tom Riddle spreading his campaign of dreadful contempt to Linata and Kormokrev, presenting a falsely extended hand of friendship before sharply withdrawing it and replacing the gesture with one of an omniscient threat of terror. And to think, Mosheadge and Horthwarg were next! There was one certain difference, however, for Severus had known even then in his younger days that these two towns would have never given in to any force of opposition – not without a fight.

He quickened his pace that morning in heading on to Horthwarg, needing to get to Lily as soon as was possible, naught but a suitcase and certain piece of ribbon in tow, along with the change of clothes on his back . . .

. . . . . . . .

Reaching into his pocket now that he'd since folded up the old letter and placed it back into a box of things that were reminiscent of Lily, present-day Snape lifted a tattered old piece of ribbon now, still moved to the faintest and saddest of all smiles as he looked back at it. Some things never changed – this is a universal truth. Severus understood it quite well, in fact.

His life had never changed from one of misery – not even for one moment – ever since he'd lost his Lily.

* * *

><p>In the dark, shadowy hours of half-past three in the near winter morning that day, a confused and inexplicably spooked-feeling Harry Potter hesitated just outside the front door of the house he'd called home ever since he could remember. Sure, it was a ridiculous hour to be up, let alone out and about, and never even mind being outside of the house, much less his bed at this time of night; Of course, it was quiet, with no sounds to be heard coming from within the Weasley home. His home – he kept thinking this, and then he, Harry, decided that something wasn't quite <em>right<em>. This is how Harry decided that he knew:

He knew that something was horrifically wrong because the rest of his family – adoptive parents and brothers alike – were not inside this house. How he knew, well, _Who knows?_ he thought; he just felt that he knew this to somehow be fact all the same. And in being so sure of knowing, he was frightened because the gut feeling resonating within him from the realization was one that panged of knowing that something terrible had to have happened to cause the rest of his family to be out of their home at such an hour.

Slowly turning and walking away from the house altogether, Harry found that he had no idea where they'd be, if, heavens forbid, something _was_ wrong - which he stilly heavily suspected to be the case. Trying to think back on the events of the night prior within his tired, needy of sleep mind, the green-eyed young man recalled the near-rioting – he recalled wanting to look for Ron in the woods but ultimately leaving it up to his brothers and Aberforth and Alastor, so that he could instead escort Hermione on her search for her father.

_I wonder – I _hope_ she did find him soon enough_, Harry thought to himself as he moseyed along. _But . . . just in case she isn't okay still; well – either way – I'd just better go and check on her to make sure all is well. And who knows - she might know whether or not I'm just feeling paranoid about the house being empty._

Feeling once more confused even though he now had a course of action to take, Harry detoured from the general path through the town to instead head directly to the Granger household. The confusion came from the fact that he could not for the life of him remember actually leaving Hermione's side in the first place. They'd bickered only slightly – and even so, _why_ they had was perfectly unclear; bickering was unlike them to do with one another, under typical circumstances. _Well then again, the circumstances were not merely typical last night_, he considered.

He soon enough found himself standing before the front door of the Granger home. Gently knocking on its door a few times, he patiently waited a moment, before knocking again.

Within the house, Hermione tossed and turned in her bed. The Thorn trees were in distant view, but her feet were taking her toward them steadily enough. A new sound was heard this night in the woods, though. It was a gentle, banging sound, akin to knuckles rapping against one of the tree barks.

From outside, Harry knocked a third time, just a bit more loudly, before calling out the names of Hermione and her father.

"Harry," Hermione whispered, before slowly opening her eyes; confused for a few seconds, the brown-eyed girl soon came to realize that while she'd been in her dreaded dream forest for perhaps a few moments, she was now awake and safe and sound within her own home.

"Hermione – are you inside? I need to know if you're okay," Harry called out to her through the front door.

Her heart skipping a beat, Hermione hurriedly moved from her bed and ran to the door before quickly pulling it open, not even caring that she was in nothing but her nightgown as she threw her arms around the neck of the young man that had been calling out to her.

"I'm okay now," she said to him as she clung to him, feeling him come to wrap his arms around her for a hug in return. "You saved me from the Thorn trees just now, Harry. Besides, you're okay, too. I was worried about you."

Harry had no idea what on earth she meant about saving her from Thorn trees, but he continued to hug her all the same as he said, "I am okay. I'm sorry you were worried, Hermione. I'm sorry if I woke you or your father up, too, but I had to know if you were alright after . . . well, after I guess I left your side."

"You mean when you went into the woods to look for Ron?" Hermione asked him as she slowly moved her arms from his neck and took a step back.

_That seems right, at least – I could've gone to look for him,_ Harry thought to himself, before saying, "Right . . . well, I think I was just tired or something; I ended up falling out or something near the edge of the woods. When I came to I made to go home, but I had a feeling something wasn't quite right and well, like I said, I had to check in on you before I did anything else, Hermione."

"Oh God – you don't know what's happened then, Harry?" she asked in return, her eyes growing wide as she brought a hand to place it on his forearm; it felt almost icy cold to her touch. "Oh, Harry, you're frozen solid, aren't you? How didn't I notice before? Come on inside and get warm now!"

Disregarding the remarks about feeling cold, Harry moved his hands to place them at either side of Hermione's shoulders, grasping her there tightly as he looked her back in the eyes. "What happened? What happened that I don't know about yet?"

As Hermione looked back to her dearest friend – indeed, one of the only friends she had left, she sadly came to realize in that moment – she blinked back a stinging sensation in her eyes a few times, before shaking her head slightly back and forth, the words to tell him of the greatest shared tragedy thus far in their young lives either unwilling or unable to pass on through her lips. At long last, she managed to utter the frightful occurrence and all that came along with it in a singular syllable utterance: ". . . _Ron_."

"_No_ . . ." was Harry's first whispered reply, before he shook his own head and then said, "You're not seriously telling me that something happened to him last night, are you?"

Trying to keep herself collected for Harry's sake as he took in the impact of the blow she'd just given him, Hermione felt she could only answer him with as much honesty as she could. "I'd give anything in the world to tell you I'm not being serious, Harry," she said to him, her voice cracking a bit as she still fought back the urge to cry.

"But – Fred and George went to find him!" Harry exclaimed, nearly shouting right in her face. "They were supposed to find him and bring him back!"

"They did, he just wasn't –"

" – no, I – so you're saying . . . he's _really_ -? . . . are you _sure_ he's . . .?"

Harry wasn't making a lot of sense; he had only figured this much to himself once he'd thought over the disjointed words he'd just said, trying to ask a question that was in the form of a mindless uttering. And yet, here was Hermione, he could see, nodding her head – understanding him despite the fact that she shouldn't be able to.

"Oh, God," he said quietly, before releasing his grasp on her shoulders to instead wrap his arms around Hermione for a second hug, though rather than hanging her arms around his neck, the girl simply folded into the embrace, letting her face rest against Harry's chest as he held her securely, like he wasn't about to let her go for the world. "I'm sorry I wasn't there when . . . whenever you found out. I'm sorry; I should have been there, for poor Ron – for you –"

"Harry, it's not your fault what happened to him," Hermione said quietly as she remained in the embrace. "The werewolf took him from us, just as it took Ginny, Lavender, Angelina – it has to be stopped. If it's not, I don't know what any of us are going to do."

Again now Harry felt the feeling of being purely _spooked_ fall over him. Here was the girl who'd have been happy to tell anyone that werewolves are not real – no such thing at all, never was and never would be. Here she was talking about not merely werewolves, but _the_ werewolf, now saying it without second guessing its chance of legitimately existing in the first place. Worse still, she listed off the list of its apparent victims in a monotone, listless way. It was sad to hear coming from her, Harry thought.

"Let's not talk about it anymore," Harry said to her. "Ron – I'm sure you know, because you always just _know_ things, Hermione – he cared for you so much . . . if he was still here, he wouldn't want to see or hear you in such a state as this, sounding so hopeless."

"But I _feel_ hopeless. I have no idea what to do about a werewolf. It's a werewolf. It's not supposed to be able to hurt anything – it's like the vampire or the banshee – it can frighten you when you're a child, but it's fun in a way, though only because it can't _really_ frighten you all that much because it can't _really_ get you to harm you in the first place. Except . . . _surprise_ . . . now it magically _can_."

"Don't think too much into it. If it's just like any other wolf – or, if it becomes like any other wolf when not being a man, well, look; some people have killed wolves in the woods before, in self-defense from the creatures that had been hungry enough to attack first in the first place. This wolf shouldn't be truly infallible is my point. Something _can_ be done about it –"

" – _if_ it's found," Hermione pointed out.

Sighing heavily, Harry said, "Yes. If it's found." He then pulled away from his embrace with Hermione, before taking hold of her hand and then saying, "Where _are_ the Weasley's at then?"

"If they're not in the house, then they must still be at the Elder House," Hermione answered.

"Will you go with me there then now, Hermione?"

"Of course I will, Harry."

Not so far away, looking out from a window (thanks to the seemingly ever-present moonlight that came as of late) Neville watched as Harry and Hermione walked off from her house together, hand-in-hand. He hadn't meant to be spying at all this time, just as he wasn't spying the night before when his Gran had called him inside. Yet, he kept seeing all the things he had an inkling no one else was taking particular notice of. Incidentally, when'd he'd first awoken, it hadn't been either Harry or Hermione that had caused him to look out the window in the first place. No, it had been because he'd seen a girl with pale-blond hair moving about on the property across from his own house – _that_ had caught his initial attention.

Even in only the moonlight he could tell that this girl was undoubtedly a stranger to him. He'd never seen the looks of any other girl like her in all his life. A strange fluttering feeling somewhere in his stomach had led him to thinking that this wasn't such a bad thing, really, but then she'd gone inside the house. He knew the people that lived there, and he knew they didn't have a daughter that age. He had been considering that a granddaughter would've made sense though when Harry and Hermione came into view, walking away from the general area as they held hands. And, well, now here he was at the window, so many minutes later.

Turning away from the window and shaking his head, Neville then went to the main room of the house and began putting wood from the box by the mantel into the fireplace. His Gran wasn't at all fond of the chill of mornings that came in late autumn and lasted the whole rest of winter on out.

No, he'd better get that fire going, for Gran would be up soon enough; he really had to stop being an accidental busybody or else he wouldn't get anything important done, he figured.


	11. Chapter 11

_Thanks to all for the reviews, as always!  
><em>

* * *

><p>Harry was sat on a large stone around the side of the Weasley home – his home – the increasingly shrinking home, when he stopped to think about it, which so happened to be what he was doing just this moment: thinking; pondering; trying to make connections.<p>

It had been a full week from the day that he'd lost his best friend and for what it was worth he'd partially lost his other best friend, as well. Hermione, the poor thing, she barely said a word to him anymore. True though it was that she was rarely away from his side anymore, she just wasn't herself. It was perfectly obvious that a change had come over her. Even Neville Longbottom picked up on it, and Neville Longbottom wasn't one of the usuals in their own little inner circle. He was now though. Having always been on friendly enough terms, the domino of deaths had allowed for a new lenience policy in who the sometimes introverted Harry wanted to have around him.

And if the truth were to be told, he invited just about anyone's company these days.

So it was therefore self-explanatory as to why Hermione sat alongside him on the large rock, the pair situated across from a tree stump where thereupon sat a dainty, flighty looking girl with fly-away, brilliantly blond hair; the aforementioned Neville sat beside her, cross-legged on the ground, and also on the ground, sitting across the way from him sat the pair of Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas.

They'd been sat out like this since just after lunch time, and if they were to go by the position of the sun in the sky just now, they'd have realized they'd been lazing about there, moping quietly with little to no conversation for nearly two hours.

"Erm . . . what was it you said your name was again?" Seamus suddenly asked aloud, looking in the direction of the tree stump girl as she drew her knees up to her chest.

"Luna – Luna Lovegood," she answered promptly, giving him a faint smile; he returned it in an equally faint, though sheepish manner – he very well knew her name all the same, but his desperation to end the strange silence had grown harder for him to resist as the moments had ticked on by.

"Right, right," he then said. "Luna from Vagabonder – now come to stay here in Horthwarg. Fantastic! Do tell me; were there ever any werewolf problems in Vagabonder?"

Hermione darts her eyes in Seamus's direction as he says this; she feels slight unease from the use of the word. She feels it might be a jinx, even. She opened her mouth to say so but Harry cleared his throat and reached over, placing a hand atop her own. "I know what you're going to say. Listen, Hermione - he can say the word werewolf a hundred times if he wants. It won't undo anything. _And_ the full moon is gone. We can go shout the word werewolf from the mountaintops and nothing's going to happen."

Hermione blushes a bit, not too gently slipping her hand away from Harry's as she purses her lips. "I put nothing past the demon tormenting us. We've lost –" at this, Hermione held up a hand, extending all five fingers, before checking them off one by one with her other index finger as she listed names. "Lavender Brown, Ginny Weasley, Angelina Johnson and Ronald Weasley – we also lost Remus Lupin, and just because it doesn't _look_ like a werewolf attack, again I say: _I put nothing past this demon _. . . whatever it may be."

Sighing, Harry said, "Well avoiding the word forever won't change anything, either. What can we do? There haven't been any attacks in a week."

"Well, obviously, we could try to figure out _who_ the werewolf is," Dean Thomas said, piping up as he lazed back slightly on the ground, his legs outstretched before himself as he propped back on his elbows. "Even if it can't attack us at the moment, we can go and take care of it before it gets a chance to hurt somebody else, you know?"

"The only thing with that is . . ." Luna said then, speaking in a dreamy sort of way that suggested she wasn't fully there with them, within the conversation in full. "People get panicked and _then_ people get wrongly accused – wrongly _executed_ even."

"Yeah, and no one wants that," Neville said, glancing sideways at Luna as he spoke; she gave him an airy sort of smile – he turned his head and went a bit flush in the face in return; Hermione notices, and finds it kind of sweet; Seamus notices, and he snaps his forefinger against his thumb whilst sitting up much straighter all of a sudden.

Neville grows much redder, presuming this random action has something to do with his reaction to Luna's smile, but he can only hope this isn't the case as Seamus soon begins to speak: "Aye, I've got it!" he exclaims excitedly, lightly pushing against Dean's arm with one hand while simultaneously reaching out to tap Hermione on the hand with his other. "It's about liking one another! It _has_ to have something to do with it!"

"Who said anyone likes anyone else?" Neville says defensively, to which Seamus replies, "Not _you_, ya dolt!" Neville sighs in relief. "_No_, I'm tryin' to say here that Lavender liked Ron and that Ron kinda liked her back, and well, now they're both dead, aren't they?"

At this, Hermione shifts uneasily, a strange prickle feeling running down her arm to reach the hand that Seamus had just tapped. "I didn't know that Lavender had feelings for Ron, or . . . vice-_versa_ . . ." she says slowly, and though she is precisely certain about the nature of her suddenly ill stomach and the cause behind why it churns, she does her best to inwardly deny it.

". . . Actually, _I_ knew about it," Harry then confesses, and this causes Hermione's stomach to lurch again; forgetting her initial reactions, Hermione felt the very word of how she felt quite clearly, almost as if it were seared into the pit of her stomach now: _Betrayal_.

"You could've let me know," she hisses, turning to look at Harry. "After all, weren't we all _three_ the best of friends? Why would he tell you and not me, Harry?"

"Isn't it obvious?" the raven-haired young man replied at once, a little startled by Hermione's venomous tone. "He didn't tell you because he was unsure of who he liked more. Er, it was _you_ – obviously, Hermione – anyone could've seen – it just, he – it might've hurt you. That's why he never blundered out that he had a small thing for Lavender and it's also why I never did it, either: we wouldn't have wanted you hurt. Surely you can try to understand that."

With little to no effort a memory from the not so distant past springs to the young woman's mind:

_"Now hang on a moment,"_ Hermione had said to Ginny, looking puzzled as they stood together out by the Queddych pitch. _"You were just out with Dean the other night, weren't you? You told me you were over Harry a year ago!"_

_"Well, a girl can change her mind, can't she?"_ Ginny had replied; Hermione recalled how her friend's face had turned a shade of red that could've made her hair envious.

Finally, exasperated and feeling uneasy about the whole thing, Hermione had said, _"You're going back and forth between different mindsets faster than the referees at the ends of the field toss the balls back and forth during the game!"_

Solemnly nodding, Hermione grew quiet. Her stomach had settled its churning and she felt nothing but silly for feeling anything about the news of Lavender's crush in the first place. Clearing his throat awkwardly, Dean said meekly, ". . . you know there's a flaw there in your theory, Seamus. Ginny, she . . . well, she's gone. I wasn't attacked but I was courting her . . . at the time."

Reaching a hand over to pat his friend on the shoulder in a consoling fashion, Seamus hung his head slightly and said, "Mate, I'm sorry . . . I wasn't trying to drag up hurt feelings. I was just trying to connect some dots."

"I didn't know Ronald Weasley," Luna then states rather matter-of-factly; all eyes turn to her to find her idly picking the tiny petals from a blue wildflower, her knees still withdrawn as she keeps her perch on the tree stump. "But it seems to me that romances have little to do with the connections. Maybe . . . _Ron_ is the connection. His secret admirer is taken, and then his sister – Neville's grandmother was telling me earlier that one of Ron's brothers was courting the Angelina girl who was taken."

"You were talking to my Gran?" Neville blurts out, a thin line of sweat inexplicably arising around his hairline.

"Yes, she's quite lovely. A bit stern, but very entertaining – she told me many things about you, Neville," Luna says innocently enough, in her half-dreamy, perpetually serene voice; Neville looks as if he might pale.

"Well . . . maybe that makes sense," Harry finally says, exchanging a small smile of recognition with Luna as he speaks. "Ron, poor Ron . . . first his crush, then his sister, then his potential sister-in-law, and then he himself? I mean, it all kind of adds up, except for Remus's death. I mean, granted, it didn't look like a werewolf attack but . . . _actually_ . . ."

Leaning forward to rock onto his knees while craning his neck around Hermione to get a look at Harry, Seamus arches an eyebrow and says, "You thinkin' what I'm thinkin' there, Harry?"

"If you're thinking that, just maybe, Remus Lupin attacked Ron and was killed in retaliation in the process, or, if not retaliation by _Ron_ in-battle, then –"

"- by someone else who witnessed him killing Ron in the first place?" Seamus finished the sentence, now fully standing up, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Who was it that found him and brought him to your house, Hermione? You were there. Do you know who found him before you, though?"

"It was Snape," Dean answers for her and Hermione nods to confirm it as fact.

"Well then it's obvious - we should go and interrogate Snape!" Seamus concludes, fist pumped and rose out into the air.

"Have you _seen_ Severus Snape?" Neville asks, somehow pulling off a look of withdrawal without physically moving from his spot by the tree stump. "I can barely finish apothecary lessons with him at all. I mean, I'm fine with Mr. Granger, but Snape is a whole nother story. He had me so flustered once that I mixed up a bezoar and an Amanita mushroom!" After confessing this, Neville nervously pressed his face into his hands, knowing that everyone who'd ever seen a mushroom ever in their life would have no reason to confuse one for a stone, and they then would therefore deduce that he is nothing but a complete dunce.

"Oh, that's not so bad. At least no one got poisoned from it," Luna says to him gently, reaching a small hand down from the stump to pat Neville on the shoulder.

"But, but I _aspire_ to be an Apothecary! I want to take over the position in this town someday. However will I do it, though? Ye gods – I'll end up poisoning the whole town, won't I?"

While Neville commenced his panic attack by the Weasley home, other happenings were going about elsewhere. Severus Snape – the very same being implicated of dark notions by the group of peers not so far away – was located within the Elder House along with Albus, Aberforth and Alastor. Sitting at a table set for the four of them, a teacup before the brothers and Snape - the usual flask before Alastor – the group of men had just tucked in to the table. Severus, in fact, had been the one to commence the meeting of the minds, and as such, he was so inclined to first clear his throat and bow his head in the direction of the brothers' Dumbledore.

"I understand that you have some sort of information or inclination of notion to share with us this midday, Severus?" Aberforth says to him.

"Indeed," the long-nosed man replies in a grave-sounding voice. "I do believe, with at least a worthwhile amount of conviction, that I happen to know who the werewolf attacker has been."


	12. Chapter 12

Severus Snape moved swiftly and with great purpose as he walked through the chilly, winters' edge night of Horthwarg. The streets were practically abandoned, and to be fair, it wasn't so strange, he figured. Robere would have been in his home, Hermione would have been helping him put away store ingredients – surely, where else would they be? And likewise, Harry would be safely kept inside, one of four sons still at home within the Weasley home, even if he was just a surrogate of Molly and Arthur's. He vaguely recalled the birth announcements of a Bill Weasley and a Charlie Weasley from some distant time in his own past; he knew they lived elsewhere, though he didn't particularly care. In fact, beyond the general practicalities of helpfulness that go along with being an apothecary in the first place, Snape often found that he didn't really care much for anyone at all.

Those days had ended quite a long time ago.

True though it was that there were still a few, sparse fellow villagers he felt an obligation to regard with respect, there was one individual that he sorely wished he didn't have to care about at all. Every time he looked into this person's eyes, it was nothing for him but a painful reminder of loss. Loss of friendship – loss of love – loss of sanity, of hope; _May Harry James Potter be damned_, Severus wished to swear as an oath, but he knew regardless that he would do anything he could to protect and help this young man until the day he died. It just would have been an easier vow to keep if he hadn't taken _so much_ after his father. It was a cruel, divine trick played on Snape by Lucifer himself – the baby boy, the last living prodigy of his beautiful Lily – keeper of her eyes yet near-replica elsewise of his stupid, undeserving _pig_ of a father.

Soon enough Snape finds himself walking by the Granger household. He notices no light on within and decides it's strange; after all, he had been half-expecting them to be awake preparing the stock for any new maladies. Oh well. Perhaps they both took an early night instead due to their being no recent attacks? And either way, the Granger house was not his destination. It hadn't been when he'd left from his discussion within the Elder House, and it still wasn't his destination now.

Approaching the Weasley home instead, Snape does see a light on through a yonder window. Perhaps the Potter boy is awake then. This is all well and good, but then, just as Snape is, maybe, fifteen steps away from their front door, he hears the distinctive sound of a twig breaking.

_Snap!_

Convinced he is being followed at first Snape tunes his ear in more acutely and soon divines voices coming from the woods nearby. Perhaps he is not being followed then, but all the same, _how queer_. Why would anyone be out in the woods in times such as these?

"Well I don't _know_ why I felt kind of strange when I found out. I just did. Is that not okay?" hissed a young woman's voice; Snape quietly steps in more closely, honing in on whatever conversation might be going on.

"Look – Hermione – it is okay. I understand that you were surprised. I guess it just made _me_ feel weird to consider you might be jealous, because for the longest time I've thought . . ."

"You've thought _what_, Harry?"

"I've, I've _felt that_ –"

"You've – felt – _what_?"

"Well how can I ever answer you, Hermione, if you keep interrupting me?"

Inwardly, Snape groans; he's merely found himself spying in on a teenager's quarrel. How splendidly wonderful – he's found the young man he needs to speak with but said young man is already too wrapped up, apparently, within another discussion.

"I – just - Hermione . . ."

More snapping of twigs are heard – quite a lot actually, and in quick succession too, as if someone's actually hopping up and down upon them. _Is one of them having a tantrum or fit_? Snape wonders. He feels beyond annoyed; here he is wasting his time, just wanting to speak to this stupid Potter boy . . .

"Harry, isn't it OBVIOUS?" Miss Granger's voice rings out then, quite loudly; Snape is actually a bit startled by how loud it sounds, compared to the previous whispers and hisses. "I – of course it's you. I felt things for Ron. You knew it, I knew it, he knew it, his mother knew it, his sister and the twins knew it -! But, do you know what else, Harry?" More footsteps over broken twigs on the forest floor are heard, and then: "Do you know how, _just_ before poor Ginny dies, we're at that Queddych pitch, and Fred and George are teasing us both about love and romance?" Hermione's voice is thick as she rants, as if she might be crying. "They tease their sister for liking you – they bring me into it, too, accuse me . . . God, they were being stupid. . . . Yet they were completely right."

"They were completely right about Ginny liking me?" Harry ventures to guess. "_Ah_h! What was the push for, Hermione!"

"You're being stupid on purpose, that's why I pushed you. Are you really going to make me be the one to say it first? Don't you get it yet? If I could've figured out how to say it before, well, then I already would have said it."

"Well, by God, Hermione, if it's so difficult to tell me, just don't tell me at all."

Snape is almost at his boiling point, though not only because of this massive waste of time but also because of his own stupid curiosity to see how the harried-tempered Miss Granger might respond to the Potter boy's arrogance. Oh he was _so_ like his father – the boy just had this, this _feeling_ of entitlement that Snape wanted to beat out of him with a stick, and not even on Miss Granger's behalf; Lily would have wanted to have a go at her son for being so conceited, too – of this he felt sure.

Smirking as he hears a series of smack-like sounds and small groans and yelps of pain, Severus folds his arms happily – maybe Miss Granger wouldn't put up with it after all. Maybe she'd do right where Lily had gone wrong, which was what she did when she mistook the arrogance of James Potter for some immature form of charm he'd simply, presumptuously, grow into someday.

"Hermione, stop it!" Harry soon bellows, and all at once the tussle and fight sounds stop. "I – love you – too."

Snape feels a slink of uneasiness slide down his spine uncomfortably. Was this how James had won over Lily? Did she smack him into his senses, causing him to confess an unfounded love to her just to get her to shut up?

"God, Harry . . . was it all that hard to say?" says Hermione's voice hoarsely. "I love _you_, too. I love you . . ."

Severus feels as if he might grow sick; he suddenly knows that he _certainly_ doesn't want to hear another word of this. His would-be meeting with Potter would have to wait until the morning. Feeling heartsick and nauseated with flooding thoughts of the first time he'd caught Lily in an embrace with stupid, cocky _James Potter_, Severus hurriedly makes his way on to his open-windowed bachelors' apartment.

Back within the woods, Harry is holding tightly onto Hermione's wrists, lest she lose her composure and decides to attack him again for some reason or another. Though, at the same time, he figured the odds weren't likely. He'd finally told her the breathtakingly obvious, which was that, of course, he loved her. She'd reciprocated. She had no reason to hit him now, but she looked crazy – positively on the verge of losing her mind. Even her normally bushy hair seemed to stand further on edge than usual, as if fueled by pure electricity. Her breathing somewhat heavier than normal, Harry listens to her say it again, now in a whisper, "I love you, Harry Potter. I don't . . . want to lose you. Not to a werewolf or a demon or any –"

"Hermione," Harry said, interrupting her by releasing her wrists and placing a single finger against her lips. "Right now – just, for right now – there's no such thing as werewolves and demons."

The brown-eyed girl's heart faltered slightly as she felt Harry slowly drag his forefinger down her lips, taking his time to cease his silencing of her. She thinks she knows what comes next, even though she's never done this before. Suddenly she wonders if Harry's done this before – maybe with Cho; Ginny; Romilda and her noxious cakes even -? In the next minute, Hermione finds she doesn't quite care, because Harry's eyes aren't on anyone other than her. They're on Hermione and Hermione alone, all the while as he walks her back against the nearby tree trunk . . . all the while as he brings his hands to slip her evening coat from her shoulders, rendering them bare . . . all the while as he rests his chin on one of her said barren shoulders. . .

"It's my fault," he whispers to her. "I've been crazed – not myself lately. I shouldn't have taunted you just now . . . but I knew that after the Lavender and Ron thing was thrown out in the air earlier today before our afternoon chores, well, I figured it'd all come to a head – a resolution of some sort. Still – sorry for the taunting."

Hermione feels as if her heart might burst from sheer anticipation; though, anticipation of what, she can't be sure. She had expected a kiss, though none had come – yet. "I haven't been myself lately either. Maybe I felt too guilty over Ron to just tell you how I've been feeling about you all along in the first place, Harry," she concedes. "But I should have." Hermione feels Harry slip her coat down her arms further; soon it's fallen to the forest floor.

"It's out in the open now, though. We can just be together – who cares who doesn't like it? We have what we have – let's keep it while we can, while there's no such thing as werewolves," Harry answers her, tangling a hand up in her crazy, fierce locks of hair as he also slowly nuzzles his nose against hers. His heart is racing, blood rushing, head pounding – the no-werewolf thing isn't only for her benefit; as Harry finally brings his lips to close against Hermione's at long last, she truly is the one and only thing on his mind, as well.

* * *

><p>Kicking over empty milk cans by the doorway as he storms into his home, Severus Snape turns and angrily slams the door shut behind him as harshly as possible, not caring in the slightest if it happened to maybe disturb some of his neighboring folk. It was just too similar – a near ghostly reenactment – the bright, quick-witted girl falling for the undeserving yet popular boy. "Why'd you <em>do it<em>, Lily?" Snape says aloud, looking and sounding as thoroughly distressed as if he'd just been actually spying upon she herself in the woods with James.

Stepping over to a nearby table, the apothecary's apprentice unfastens a bottle of absinth. Pouring a dose of it into a spoon as if it were medicine, he soon sips the bitter drink from the edge of the polished silverware while closing his eyes. Blinking them back open just as quickly, he drops the spoon to the floor and figures that – just this once – _to Hell with it all_. Lifting up the full glass bottle, Snape took a dangerous and ill-advised straight swag of the poison-tasting stuff before slamming it back down onto the table and turning to head for his small, cot-like bed in the corner of his room. As he walked, he did his best not to blink – not even once; every time he dared to close his eyes, it was none other than Lily that popped up behind them – Lily Evans in all her beautiful, magnificent glory.

"I loved you more than God adores even His highest angels . . ." Snape murmurs as he sits down on the edge of the cot and kicks off his boots; he is soon laid down, flat on his back, and though he wishes to not see Lily just now, his eyelids are putting up quite the fight against his willpower; drooping here, drooping there, the absinth soon enough sets anchor within Severus's body and he drifts off to a state of strange half-sleep, where he was in no condition anyone would call _normal_, per se, but where he had some say over the thoughts that played out in their dreamlike way in his head all the same. Within this lucid yet paralyzed state of mind Snape feels his body begin to ache with dread as he enters into the forest on an early spring morning, many, many years earlier . . .

**. . . . . . . .**

The sweetest little birds were singing that morning just after the dawning of the sun. The grass wasn't fully green as it could be yet, and was more of a mix of olive and brown tones. Walking in simple shoes toward the forest, a somewhat thinner, longer-haired Severus rolled up his shirt sleeves. He and Lily had set a date to forage the woods for berries and fresh flowers or nuts or berries to experiment with. They both had taken an early interest in the ways of being an apothecary – no less, they'd actually first shyly befriended each other during a lesson given by Mister Granger, who had decided to open up the lessons he gave his own son up for any other youths in the village. It was best friendship at first sight on both sides.

Fast forward to a few years later and here was one half of that unbreakable bond now, snapping twigs with each new footstep he takes as he makes his way toward a familiar clearing. It's a place within the woods that he's met Lily at a many a time before. So far, so normal, he thinks, and then he sees something strange right before his eyes.

Lily's in the clearing alright, but her back is to him and her waist-length red hair shines radiantly in the sun that breaks through from above. Standing off to the side of her is another individual though, and this was something Severus had not anticipated. More than surprise, he feels downright anger course through him as he realizes who this person is.

"You go and leave her alone, you dirty, rotten, bastard!" he shouts, charging forward toward the pair of peers standing mere feet away. "I told you to stay the –"

"_Severus_, calm down!" Lily exclaims in an alarmed voice, pressing one of her small, pale hands outward, against his chest to stop him from moving any further. "James is just –"

"Just being a slimy piece of dirt again?" Snape guesses, breathing heavily though he respects Lily's want of boundary between he himself and James.

"_Actually_, Snivellus, I was just chatting with Lily. 'That against the rules now – or are you just getting your little knickers in a twist all over me being in her general vicinity again?"

"I had every reason to be upset. You stole her book from her and tossed it up into the tree! What if she'd crawled up there to the branch for it and fallen? I didn't see _you_ volunteering to fetch it, or, or even apologizing, Potter!"

"Why would I have apologized? It was Lily's fault for keeping her nose stuck in a book in the first place. I'd called her name once, twice, three – four – five- _six times_ and she kept her eyes on the pages as she flipped through them. Now that was _hardly_ polite of her, Snivellus."

"Stop calling him that, James," Lily says angrily, giving James a stern glance.

"James?" Severus repeats back, stepping away from Lily and allowing her hand to fall limply from his chest. "You're calling him that now?" He sounds incredulous; Lily, in turn, grows a bit red in the ears, before grimacing.

"Well it _is_ his name," she says sourly, before turning her attention to the third party and saying, "Just like Severus has a real name, too. Do not call him by that idiotic little nickname in front of me ever again."

Raising his eyebrows, Snape steps forward once more. "Well now, I can very well handle myself, Lily. I don't need you to –"

"Well _excuse me_ for trying to take up for my best friend," she says, cutting him off as she balls her hands into fists at her sides and stares back at him, stung.

Snape sighs, his face fallen; "I – I'm so, so sorry, Lily –" he begins to say, before James steps forward, placing an arm around Lily's waist – it's a move that the redhead soon jerks away from.

"Let's go, Sev," she says, reaching out and taking hold of his hand before marching out of the forest with him; as he's happily dragged along, the long-nosed seventeen year old looks back over his shoulder and calls out to James:

"Don't put your hands on Lily or her things ever again!" Lily, still just ahead of him, sighs a bit but says not a word.

_**The mental image dissolves as a practically zombified present-day Snape gives a loud sort of groan, his eyes fluttering open and then closing just as quickly again as he finds himself thrust into a second memory from years' past:**_

A slightly taller, shorter-haired Severus feels dejected as he sits beside Lily in Mister Granger's house. Robere is on his other side, sitting forward, fully interested in his father's words. On the other side of Lily sits an equally entranced Astrid. However, the eighteen year olds sat between them – the aforementioned Lily and Severus himself – have their thoughts on anything but the potential uses of chamomile ground into tea to settle evening restlessness.

Lily's head was in the clouds. She'd spent the last three and a half weeks being courted by a veritable new man about town. After going off for some voluntary militia training in Mosheadge (of which lasted about the span of eight weeks) and returning home, James Potter, son of James, Senior and Lira Potter, had a whole new look about him. His once unruly hair cut even, smart and sharp, he now held his shoulders back as he walked through town, confident and no longer merely cocky about his various Horthwarg achievements.

In times' past, this same boy had tried to charm his way into Lily's heart by way of bragging about his Queddych prowess and how he bet he could probably take a Beater's bat and knock a bludger clear to the moon; as it was now, James Potter the _man_ spent his evenings with the green-eyed belle of the village at her own home, sitting within the kitchen with not only she alone, but her mother as well. Tea sipping, socializing, general chit-chat – Lily's mother was simply over the moon about this young man.

"_Thank the heavens he is so inclined to spend his time with you, darling," _she had said merely two evenings beforehand, after James had kissed both their hands and left for his own home. ". . . _I'll be honest, Lily; for the longest time I feared with great trepidation –"_ Her mother pauses and turns her head to cough, hacking for a full moment before she regains her breath properly enough to continue speaking: _"- well, I was afraid you'd let that boy of Eileen Snape's go for your hand . . . the unmarried, ill-mannered . . . sick in the head woman. It's not her fault she's ill, but –" _More coughing. _"BUT it is her son's fault for being the degenerate he is. He didn't opt in to the militia training; no, but this fine young James boy did. Your father, your poor father, Lily, he's looking down from Above now and he's smiling on your choice."_

Lily sneaks a surreptitious glance in Severus's direction, feeling nauseated by guilt though she knows he didn't have to endure her mother's words, presuming he has no real idea of exactly what's been going on with her lately anyhow.

Severus notices the glance; Lily is not good enough of a sneak. He dismisses it, does not return it, makes little matter of the glance at all, in fact; he pretends to care about the lesson instead, while feeling nauseated because he knows Lily is falling for a rotten, rotten man.

_**A groan; a lurch; finally, Snape dissolves from his dreary memory-laden dreamland enough to roll over onto his side – when he does so, he opens his eyes.**_

"Sev, thank God you can open your eyes!" exclaims a pale-faced woman with a frame of red hair about her face. "I thought you'd gone and left me again!"

"Lily . . .?"

_**His eyes flutter closed again. Memories return.**_

Eighteen and a half year old Snape decides to suck up his pride and go visit Lily. He's been ignoring her for ages now – but it's all stupid, isn't it? He won't win her back by doing nothing at all. He steps around the side of her house after gently knocking on its front door and getting no answer. Stopping dead in his tracks the second he arrives there though. He feels his heart lurch clear up his throat, before sinking back through his stomach like a stone to the bottom of a well.

Lily is caught up in the arms of James Potter, their faces impossible to discern, one from the other – lips locked, limbs locked in the morning sun – a passionate embrace that Severus would have sold his soul to the devil himself to have avoided.

"_**Lily!" **_Sitting bolt upright on his cot in the present and real hours of darkest early morning, Severus feels strangely sober and somber. He glances downward to find himself still dressed. He smacks his dry lips and tastes the hint of absinth that remains there still. With a pain in his chest he remembers the phantom of Lily's memory that visited him on the cusp of dream and reality. As he remained sat still, cold within his dark home, Snape couldn't decide for himself whether the memory-revisited dreams were worse than the mirage of Lily or vice-versa.

* * *

><p>Within the trees of the forest of Horthwarg, Hermione begins to slowly drift toward the Thorn trees. And alas, the birds have beaten her to the scene this time. Trepidation sinks in and just when she fears she is lost for good yet again a hand reaches out and pulls her to safety.<p>

"Hermione, it'll be morning in a few short hours – we should get back home. Hermione, come on and get up now. I'll walk you home."

Hurrying to scramble from the ground and to her feet - feeling far beyond anything that resembled the term 'startled' - the brown-haired girl feels at first confused, and then relieved to find Harry holding onto her hand, having had pulled her to her feet. As memory returns, she continues holding his hand and lets him lead her from the woods, to sneak off back to their respective homes.

They'd been kissing and holding each other for a good long while in the woods just earlier, she recalls – for how long, she has no earthly idea; but evidently they'd fallen asleep together, and just as long as they could sneak into their homes without stirring respective family members, they wouldn't have to face being accused of anything more than what little they'd done in the first place.

It so happens to be their lucky morning and they both manage this, somehow, miraculously. First Harry makes sure Hermione is safely within her home and then he leaves to go to his; not a soul has noticed. Or so he assumes.

A rather curious Neville, however, has managed to play spy yet again from the window of his and his Gran's home. Somehow, the friend that speaks up the least and is informed of most things lastly of them all is the first to realize and, therefore, know of the budding courtship of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger.


	13. Chapter 13

Neville Longbottom is actually a very fascinating young and upcoming apothecary there within the village of Horthwarg. He does not necessarily _quite_ view himself in this light, but one can be rest assured that his dear Gran does. In fact, it was the lasting impression that she left with a nice, clever young girl whom she'd happened to be speaking with not all so long ago.

This nice, clever young girl wakes up now, a few mornings afterward, to the sound of anger and resentment. She sighs and attempts to withdraw back beneath the bed linens; she _knows_ the source of the hostility between her father and her maternal grandparents. Not a single word of it has been spoken to her yet she understands it all the same.

She just wishes it wasn't this way.

"We've been over this – I had not the money to bring her fully preserved body in-tow back with us for you to bury. I had to bring you here ashes . . ." Luna hears her father repeat the same reasoning now for the thirtieth time over in the next room; this blond girl finds that while her mother's folks are nice by all appearances, that it's more truly the case that they are nice on condition – condition that you do precisely as they wish, that is. The more she stays here with them while her poor, broken-hearted and empty-pocketed father looks for a decent enough place of their own to stay at, the more Luna sees them in the way she empathizes that her own mother must have viewed them: selfish and unwilling to listen.

_No wonder my mother ran off, married my father and then fled town with him_, she bitterly thinks, and at once Luna is sick to her stomach. It is simply not in her nature to build up hostile feelings within her tiny being. Knowing that hiding in bed is useless, she creeps from without the covers and quietly gets dressed. Not bothering to comb her hair out, she manages to push open the window there in the spare room, before hitching one leg out and toppling over sideways just to reach the fresh, nonjudgmental ground beneath her.

"Are you alright there, Luna?" a voice asks her not too soon afterward.

Rolling over onto her back in her calf-length, white dress, Luna smiles up at Neville as he offers her his hand. She takes it and is helped to her feet. "Yes, I'm alright. Thank you, Neville."

"Much obliged," he replies, scratching at the back of his head after releasing her hand; it's merely nervous habit at this point for pretty much any potentially awkward situation he might happen to find himself in. "Any, er, reason you were sneaking out of your grandparents' house?"

"The air's easier to breathe out here," she answers simply. "You're out here, too, aren't you?" She inhales deeply, before releasing her breath and adding, "Do you see what I mean?"

"Yeah," Neville answers her, without bothering to take a check of the current air quality; he is smiling slightly instead as he says to Luna, "It's always easier to breathe out here."

Tilting her head to the side somewhat, Luna says, "Neville, are you very busy this morning?"

Half-shrugging, the tall young man answers, "Not particularly."

"I was thinking about going to visit my mother," Luna says; Neville feels a bit nervous again, unsure of what the girl before him might now say or do, or how she might act – he knows her mother is already a buried urn of ashes in the town's sole cemetery, after all.

"Yeah, Luna?"

"Yeah. Would you mind walking me there, Neville; maybe keep me some company?" she finally asks him.

"Ah, well, sure, Luna – why . . . not?" he answers her, and soon the pair of them are heading off toward the graveyard of Horthwarg.

For a while the two of them walk side by side in silence. For Luna, this means taking in the simple, subtle sounds of the chilly morning around her. Glancing up toward the sky, she decides to herself that snow is inevitably on its way – perhaps the first really good dusting will come even as quickly as this very evening once the sun goes down. Neville, meanwhile, glances around and thinks the same thing about the potential for snowfall, though he wonders if the presence of the silence is his fault. Somehow.

"Neville," Luna says then, surprising him a bit.

"Erm, yes, Luna?"

"I don't bite, you know. I'd talk a bit more, normally, but I'm not sure what to talk about. You're the native here – not me," she says, glancing at him and giving him a kind smile as she speaks. "Why don't you tell me a little bit more about Horthwarg?"

"As in, say, a history lesson of sorts?" Neville replies.

"Sure, that sounds nice, as long as it doesn't bore you to tell me about it."

"Oh, no, not at all," Neville answers at once, stepping in a bit more closely to Luna; inwardly he feels that if he wasn't an aspiring apothecary that he'd be an aspiring town historian instead. "Horthwarg was founded eight decades ago by a man and his family that had travelled from Currerbell and happened upon the clearing after a long, exhaustive patch of forest."

Already, Luna is interested in knowing more; she likewise steps in a bit more closely to Neville's side.

"The man's name was Percival Dumbledore. He came to town with his wife Kendra and their three children: Albus, Aberforth – their sons – and little Ariana, their only daughter. Sending news back to Currerbell by way of a small party of men-of-arms that had travelled along with the Dumbledore's, word of this new place soon got out and a marginal amount of the population of Currerbell itself end up migrating."

"What was it called 'Horthwarg' for?" Luna asks then, looking a bit puzzled. "Why not some variation on the founder's surname?"

"Ah, well you see, according to the town elders left to us, Horthwarg was a mixing of the names of Percival Dumbledore's mother and maternal grandmother – Horthelga and Wargnerynia, respectively."

"Those are a mouthful!"

"Indeed," Neville says, before giving a bit of a laugh and adding in confession: "I might be pronouncing them wrong, just so you know."

"Ah, but that's alright. It's the attempt that counts," Luna says. "Well what became of Ariana? I've noticed that the Elder House has the brothers; I've not heard of a sister Dumbledore."

Glancing away, Neville's more chipper, more eager demeanor begins to fade away a bit at this question. " . . . Ariana . . . she is, to this day, a sore subject for either of the village elders." Neville begins by noting this; his hand is nervously scratching at his hair again – Luna takes notice of this. "The story goes that Percival came down with a bought of hydrophobia. He went plain out _batty_, and in a short period of time, too . . . Albus and Aberforth both had been sent off for militia training in Mosheadge around this time. Now, Aberforth and his brother both got the distress letter from their mother that they ought to maybe come home, just in case."

"And they didn't?" Luna ventured to guess.

"Albus didn't," Neville answered simply. "Aberforth _did_ however and, again according to story, it wasn't pretty. Are . . . are you sure you want to hear more, Luna?"

"I'm alright, Neville. Go ahead," she reassures him, even as the pair of them reaches the gates of the cemetery.

Sighing heavily, the brown-haired young man continues on. "Aberforth came home and walked into the home to find that his father had lost his mind near the end of his illness. He'd gone and taken an ax to Kendra . . . a pillow to poor Ariana's face . . ."

"That's terribly sad," Luna says matter-of-factly; Neville speaks again: "Aberforth found Percival himself lying dead on the floor in the master bedroom of their modestly nice home. Then he came to realize that much of the town itself had come down with hydrophobia, as well. Many, many quarantines – as many more burnings of bodies – it was a real mess, as you can assume."

"And poor Aberforth had to deal with all this by himself?" Luna asks in disbelief.

"Well, for whatever the reason, a couple months after this initial shake up, Albus finally _did_ make his way back home from the militia training. I mean, the town was never quite the same afterward I guess. I can only imagine how many of the past eight decades it took together to work out the issues between those two brothers."

"Indeed," Luna replies in a bleak sort of voice, nodding her head.

Lapsing into more of a somber silence as they soon stepped on past the cemetery gates, Neville and Luna walked beyond the first row of plots before pausing in place when the latter gave a small gasp of surprise. Reaching out to gently touch Neville's wrist, the blond girl gestures in the general direction of one of the very last grave plots at the end of the second row on the left; a person was lying there atop one of the plots, as if asleep upon the dirt and dead grass.

"Is that . . . yeah, that looks like . . . _Harry_," Neville said uncertainly, walking over to approach him with Luna right behind him. "Do you think he's alright?"

"Aye, he's just sleeping," Luna answered Neville in a quiet, reassuring voice. "See? He's breathing okay; his chest is rising up and down there as he lies on his side."

"I guess so . . . shouldn't we at least wake him up or something so he can go home though?" Neville wondered aloud, moving to kneel downward, his hand outstretching.

"No, maybe not yet," Luna said, reaching down to place one of her small hands on his shoulder, causing him to pause in place. "I know I've only been around Harry a few times but he always seems so sad . . . now? He seems almost peaceful. It's strange but it's true. Don't you think so, Neville?"

"I – I guess I can see what you mean," he finally said as he slowly stood back up straight, though he was a little more than just curious as to know why exactly Harry was _here_ rather than sleeping in his own home as he'd mentioned to Hermione just earlier.

"Well whose grave is that he's lying on?" Luna asked then, in a noticeably more hushed voice as she lowered her hand and grasped Neville's, tugging at it as she led him away from the snoozing, dark-haired young man.

"It's his mother's grave," Neville said somberly, feeling a little more than keenly aware of Luna still holding his hand. "Gran's told me the story before. It's really sad."

"What's his story?"

"In a nutshell?" Neville replied, as he let Luna lead him onward down the rows of grave makers. "His mother and father married before the war against the Confederations of Hager. Naturally when the war broke out his father was part of the armed forces sent into battle. I guess at some point his mother figured out she was, well, gonna have Harry – my parents had married around the time too; I was born shortly before he was.

Well, anyway, his father and his friends from Mosheadge got to come back to Horthwarg on a leave from the war. It wasn't long after they got sent back in that his father was killed in battle. Another friend, Peter, he had went absent without leave. Sirius Black – James Potter's best friend – couldn't bear to come back here to be here for Lily, Harry's mother; Remus Lupin, the other friend, well, he came back to comfort Lily. Something went wrong; Gran told me she could never be sure what really happened but Lily started to have signs of giving birth to Harry – Remus was there, but no one's sure where he ran off to after it began."

"He ran off?" Luna said then, looking confused as she slowly drew Neville to the end of the rows of the cemetery altogether. "Why would he do that?"

Shaking his head, Neville said, "One does wonder . . . Gran says that the apothecary's wife, Margot Granger, she came over and found Lily Potter bleeding terribly. I don't know why or from what. If Gran knows, she's never told me personally. She helped Lily give birth and then Lily supposedly lived long enough to name Harry and give him his father's name – Harry _James_ – and then she, sadly, passed away."

"That's terribly tragic," Luna said quietly, her gaze looking down to the ground as she finally released Neville's hand, coming to a stop before a particular grave. "So did Mrs. Weasley just adopt him then?"

"Not outright. Gran always said he was sent to live with Sirius Black in Mosheadge for a while. James Potter had wanted him to be godfather, apparently. Sometime later and Sirius was asked back for a military solo mission; he did so in James' honor. Baby Harry was sent back here to stay with a confidant of the Dumbledore's, Rubeus. He watched him for a few months but had to leave to take care of business in his home town. This is how he ended up being raised by the Weasley's."

"Wow . . ." Luna finally said, glancing back over in the direction of Harry. "That's quite a story. It feels like it'd be a huge burden to carry on a person's shoulders. Poor Harry."

"Poor Harry," Neville agreed, before glancing down to look at the grave Luna had come to a stop in front of.

_Astrid Lovegood – loving mother to Luna and loving wife to Xenophilius_

Neville felt a small pang within his stomach. It didn't make much sense, he figured. He knew this was their destination, her mother's grave marker. Still, he couldn't help but to feel particularly bad for his new friend's situation as he stood there alongside her right before what was left of her mother.

"It's okay, Neville," Luna said quietly, sensing his discomfort as she slipped her small hand into his once again. "Do you want me to go see your parents with you afterward?"

Neville wasn't expecting this question; normally he kind of drew up when it was brought up. Normally he blew off the subject at all costs. But Luna wasn't exactly normal and, besides, she'd shared her grief with him in some tiny way now first, hadn't she?

"Okay," he finally answered her. "They're near the middle of the right side of the rows – Frank and Alice Longbottom."


	14. Chapter 14

Mrs. Molly Weasley was sat on her front porch, sitting idly in a wooden chair as she really had no errand to currently do when a cry of sorrow was heard coming from a little way down the road. Slowly standing from her chair and craning her neck around the side of her porch, she watched as a salt-and-pepper haired middle-aged man by the name of Stronghold Bones came running out into the street, a look of utmost distress on his age-lined face.

"Oh, where's Robere?" he cried out at the top of his hoarse voice, repeating this over and over again as he threw his blood-stained hands up into the air. "Robere! Ro_bere_! Someone – anyone – please, dear Lord above. . ."

Dropping to his knees in the midst of the dusty lane, he hung his head while tears moved to the corner of his creased, grey eyes.

"Strong'ld, what's happened?" exclaimed Mr. Thomas, who ran up and clapped a hand to the frightened man's shaking shoulder.

"It's my dear Marina – she – the baby's come but Marina's –"

"The baby's come?" Molly exclaimed, rushing forward toward the scene at once with an alarmed look on her tired face. "No one went and called for help, Stronghold?" Not waiting for an answer, the redheaded lady hiked up her skirts a bit and rushed on into the little house waiting just beyond, where the off and on cries of a newborn child could be heard.

"M-Mrs. Weasley," said the shaking voice of a young woman inside the cabin. "My – my mother – it all just happened so fast and she won't stop bleeding. This, this isn't how it's meant to go, is it?"

"No. . . Darling, Susan, it's not at all. Please, here, hand me the babe – go and get Robere Granger or Severus Snape or just whoever you can get ahold of first!"

. . . . . . . .

Walking back into the mainstay of town together, Luna, Neville and Harry (whom they'd awoken and invited to walk back along with them) hadn't quite reached the scene of ongoing commotion ahead and were instead simply talking amongst themselves.

"So I saw you with Hermione, before . . . " Neville said awkwardly, for he felt a need to just let Harry know that he knew; somehow, keeping it to himself felt too weird.

As one could have expected, this admission brought an end to the previous off-and-on discussion the three had been having about making wagers as to how many inches would fall with the certain to come snowfall, and it caused Harry in particular to go a bit red behind the ears.

"Sometimes . . . Neville . . . you like your friends, like, say, you and me – we're chums, right?"

"Erm, yes, we're pals, Harry."

"But would you go and call, say, _Luna_ just a chum of yours, eh, Neville?"

To call Neville's face red would have been an insult to the very shade itself and needless to say Harry's words served their purpose, for the conversation about his nightly forest outing with Hermione was dropped like a hot potato, even if Luna did politely stifle a sweet giggle behind her hand, her eyes averting Neville's.

"Well . . ." Neville finally said again, after clearing his throat. "The reason I really meant to bring it up was because I'm just plain nosy about why it is you took Hermione home and set off for your own, yet Luna and I found you in the graveyard of all places this morning. I mean, if it's not too personal a question to ask, Harry . . . what led to _that_ happening, mate?"

Sighing and giving a slight shrug, the stubble-faced young man shook his head ever so slightly and said, "I did mean to go to the Weasley's, to go to bed. But I just couldn't. Maybe it's because it doesn't feel like home anymore. Bill came and went with Fleur and Charlie's off again. Of course I have Fred and George but they still don't have the heart to even go for a prank or two. Mr. Weasley is staying as long as possible at work at the historical society . . . _Mrs. Weasley_? Her face is the portrait of heartache."

When Harry finished his spiel, he sighed again and added, "So last night, all alone, feeling without a home, I went to find the closest thing to it I have left, even if, technically, I don't have it at all. That . . . probably doesn't make much sense but –"

"No, I get it, Harry," Luna said, gently placing a hand on his shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. "When we _first_ got into town, I planned to spend the night sleeping by my mother's buried urn. I ran into a man there – a mister Granger – he talked me into letting him walk me home instead, but still; whether just few feet away inside a home or else a few feet away in heaven, our loved ones are always there for us, s'long as we never forget them."

Turning his head slightly to look back at her, Harry gave Luna a soft, kind smile; it told her without any words needed that he fully understood what she meant, and that he furthermore accepted her belief and felt good about the idea of sharing it as well.

Neville, meanwhile, was beginning to pick up on the fact that things just up the road weren't exactly going on as they normally would have been on any given morning. "Hey, you guys – something's going on up ahead, just there."

"Aye, there is," Luna agreed, furrowing her brow as she caught sight of her father amidst a small group near the commotion; confused and curious, she ran up to him. "Father, what's happened?"

"Oh, I've been trying to ask these people where I might find some Agrimony around here. No one seems to know what it even _is_ and it's such an urgent matter, too. Where _is_ this town's apothecary?"

"Uh, Agrimony, sir?" Neville said, approaching Luna and Xenophilius. "I've no idea where Mr. Granger or Snape are at but I do know where a bunch of Agrimony grows. I'll take you to it."

"Bless you, my boy!" Xenophilius cried out, touching the heel of his palm to his own forehead.

"Agri-what?" Harry asked Luna, grabbing onto her arm as Neville and Xenophilius took off together.

"It's an herbal remedy. It can help to stop bleeding. Mother used to use it on deep wounds; sometimes she made teas of it in extreme cases to help internal wounds, as well . . ."

"But who'd be bleeding?" Harry asked, a thrill of terror striking him as he took hold of Luna's hand – it was an action he took simply because he simply needed something, _anything_ to hold on to at that second – and he took off running with her, running as fast as he could.

Stopping when he came to the wide open front door of the Bones household, his eyes darted from the distraught face of a sleepwear-clad Hermione to the figure of a tiny, bloodied and screaming baby in her arms, and then back to her worried face once more. "Are you hurt, Hermione?"

"No," she said simply, shaking her head back and forth, though she looked fit to cry as she shook her head madly, resembling a wilding out goat; regardless, she snuggled the baby all the more tightly to her bosom, bouncing ever so slightly. "It's Mrs. Bones. She – well obviously – this one's been born but she isn't looking so good. I was awoken by Neville's Gran when she came over to get Father but he wasn't home. And then nor was Apothecary Snape. I had no idea what I myself could do but Susan and Mrs. Weasley are trying to stop all this bleeding . . . so much bleeding . . . I just . . . I wanted to try to tend to the baby for them – the least I could do, you know?"

"I'm not partaking of this one _bit_, Severus. You have taken in enough absinthe over the years to finally addle your brilliant mind into naught by a disfigurement of what it once was. Your theory is simple impossible!"

"It's the _sole_ possibility, Robere. You know – I know it. Lily, Margot – it all only makes . . . sense; oh what's going on _here_ now?" Marching up to Mrs. Finnigan, Severus said to her in an alarmed voice, "What's gone on while Robere and I were away at the Elder House this morning?"

"Oh, it's nice of you two to show yer faces a 'tall!" she said to him in a scolding manner. "We all knew Marina Bones was getting up in her age to give forth a young'un. Yet she did this morning and now she's paying it for. Bleeding – blood everywhere – can't be stopped."

"Robere, let's go!" Snape called out at once. "We'll need some Agrimony to at least start with –"

"We've got you covered, er, sir," Neville stammered then, rushing by a surprised Snape along with Xenophilius, the both of them carrying armfuls of a strange, small looking little bush of a plant. "I'll put water on to make a tea, sir – are you going to practically apply it?"

"Oh, I'm not expert, m'boy," Xenophilius said, taking a step back.

"Oh, move over then," Snape said, rolling up the sleeves of his cloak as he pushed on by Xenophilius to enter the home, honing in on nothing else at all other than the task at hand: stopping the excessive bleeding of Marina Bones.

"Oh, Susan!" the woman was crying out, ghostly white in the face as she held on tightly to Molly Weasley's hand. "If I'm not to be making it, name the baby something_ you_ fancy. Your father, bless him, wanted to name _you_ after _me _once upon a time, after all. No ideas, dear, Susan, my beautiful baby girl . . . he's a hopeless case, you know . . ."

"She's fading fast, isn't she, Severus?" Molly asked quietly of the apothecary, even as he did what he could with the herbs, every so often glancing off to the side to watch Neville's progress with the tea-making,

"There's a chance we'll save her yet," he said, all but one tiny part of his mind busy working on the job at hand; the tiny part which wasn't doing so was focusing on the question of why on earth Robere had not joined in helping him yet.

Still standing from without the Bones household, standing beyond Stronghold, who dared to barely look on into his own home, Mr. Thomas, Ms. Longbottom and Mrs. Finnigan now flanking his sides, Hermione herself stared directly back at her father, her brown eyes searching his for the strange, lost look that had taken over them.

". . . father?" she finally asked aloud, taking a step toward him as tears began to well in his eyes.

Robere looked from her stern eyes to her thick eyebrows to her tied back hair, her sharp chin, the curved downward frown on her face, her blood-covered arms holding the wee child to her bosom against the night dress. It was a phantom image, to be sure. For if it was real, then he had somehow been returned to a place and time of re-livable horror and uncontrollable circumstance.

"Margot?" he whimpered, stumbling forward toward Hermione, who – in simple reflexive reaction, took a step back away from her father.

"_Ow_!" she hissed then, for she'd been holding the small boy to her bosom with one hand, letting her other hang freely, and one of her fingers had just been caught on a thorn from a nearby bush; shaking the thorn free of her forefinger, she moved to holding the baby in both her arms, cradling him.

"Why won't you let me see her?" Robere asked, and his sad, pitiful tone of voice struck Hermione, though in more of a disturbing way than heartwarming or pitying sort of way.

"Father, it's me – Hermione Jean – your _daughter_. This baby? He's a boy – Marina Bones' baby boy. Who – who do you think I _am_, Father?"

Seeming to snap out of some sort of strange place in his mind, Robere shook his head suddenly, before giving a start and stepping forward two paces. Instinctively, Harry quickly moved to stand in front of Hermione and Luna, as well. The infant had finally quieted itself by deciding to suck on Hermione's forefinger.

Slowly reaching his hand forward, Robere then paused, and let his hand fall away. "I apologize. I was lost in moment. A woman does need my help, yes?"

"Indeed, sir," Harry answered him, though he spoke in a wary, uncertain sort of voice. "Marina Bones has had some sort of complication. Neville and Apothecary Snape are in there now, working."

"They're using Agrimony for now, sir," Luna added.

"Right; I assume a tea is being made of it as well as a sav – well, I'll be seeing to what I myself can do now. Hermione dear, forgive me for . . . whatever that was. I was just –"

"Father, really, it's fine. Please go help Mrs. Bones," Hermione implored him, still letting the baby suck on her finger as she swayed slightly from side to side.

As Robere passed on into the house, Neville's grandmother slowly made her way around to the group of three and the little baby standing not a foot away from the life or death chaos going on within the house; she placed a hand on Hermione's back, rubbing her there gently.

"I'm doubtless you've ever seen your father act so strangely, child," she said to the brown-haired girl. "But I can give you a small bit of insight. You see . . . your mother happened to birth you in your cabin, all on her own. She was okay, really. You came into the world healthy - ten fingers and ten toes. She made her way outside to let someone – anyone nearby know . . . your father was off gathering things in the forest, after all. Mrs. Weasley saw her. She sent one of her boys to go fetch your father and they did so he soon came back.

And look at you today, Hermione! Darling, I'll be if you aren't nearly the spitting image of how Margot looked all those years ago, a little blood-stained, in a dressing gown, newborn in her arms."

Mulling all this over, Hermione ultimately frowned a bit and said, "I can imagine that being off-putting - maybe a little - but why was it _so_ upsetting to my father?"

Now patting Hermione gently on the shoulder, Ms. Longbottom said quietly, "Margot, the poor thing, from what I can remember – she, she didn't take the birth giving like a normal person would. I remember, I came out too, onto my porch. Alice had little Neville in one arm, now I think about it. Margot . . . she smiled the prettiest smile a person ever did see. Then she handed you over to your father and his silly, shaking hands.

_I want to go off to the forest to find the stream and wash myself off a bit, alright?_ She said to us all . . . Well . . . we found her not an hour later."

Hermione changed her hold of the baby, pressing him against her bosom as she gently patted at his pack and bottom simultaneously. A terrible lump was forming in her throat. Her father, bless his soul, had only ever told her that her mother had simply died after childbirth. Details were never given. Not once – not ever.

"What do you mean . . . you 'found her'?" she asked in a meek voice, and Harry – though he personally had no idea what the answer might be his own self – moved to brace himself behind Hermione, lest she need his support.

Dropping her gaze to the ground, Ms. Longbottom said, "We found her beneath the stream, dear. She was hugging onto a rock, her soul already gone to God."

Still tightly holding onto the nameless baby boy with her arm for dear life, Hermione brought a second hand to her mouth and covered over it, speechless, startled, frightened, disturbed and heartbroken all at once. She could've asked a hundred different, new questions, truly, though strangely enough it was the newcomer of the lot who asked the first – and possibly best – question of all to this.

"Why would a new mother take her own life?" asked Luna somberly.


	15. Chapter 15

Hermione had grown quite attached to the little boy that was, as of now, one week old. Holding him in her arms and gently running her fingertips over the tiniest tuft of reddish-brown hair atop his tiny little head whilst she rocked him in a chair by the window, Harry thought that this brand-new view of Hermione was nothing short of beautiful. It had been an unexpected turn of events to say the least – Mrs. Bones being saved by Snape and Neville, of all people, only to have Snape absolutely _insist_ upon having Hermione be the one to mother this newborn, 'least for the time being – it really hadn't made any sense, yet instructions had been strictly enforced _and_ dually followed.

"Have you thought of a name for him yet?" Harry asked in a very quiet tone of voice, his hand reaching forward to gently graze across the tiny, pudgy arm of the little infant as he himself stood behind Hermione's rocking chair in her own home.

"Oh shouldn't Mrs. Bones be the one to give him a name, Harry? He's her son . . . not, not _mine_ . . ." Harry turned his gaze upon the sight of the silhouette of Hermione's face as she said this and thought that, technically, she was absolutely right; however, he could tell already just by the sound of her voice and the way she said her words that her heart was completely attached to this baby as if he _were_ her very own. What was she going to be like when Snape decided he should be taken away at long last? Devastated? . . . Harry certainly hoped to heaven not.

"It's snowed _so_ much hasn't it?" Hermione then said, changing the subject as she looked up from the baby to instead gaze out through the yonder window.

"That it has," Harry had to agree, also laying eyes upon the no less than eight inches of powdery white that covered the frozen ground of Horthwarg; he then placed a kiss atop Hermione's forehead, and though her very own father was also within the cabin, sitting not three feet away by the fire while he worked away on mincing apothecary store ingredients, no surprise was to be found therein the home.

The idea of Harry and Hermione being together had seemingly melded into the normality of the townsfolk as if it had been as expected as the very snowfall itself. No one asked any questions nor were any accusations made; only, strangely enough, queer and curious looks from Severus Snape were given to the pair when he crossed their presence while together, _especially so_ when the baby boy was amongst them, as well. That bit of weirdness aside, it was just the way things were now.

"Still, Hermione, you've got to call him, well, _something_," Harry then murmured, his chin now resting atop her hair as he wove the conversation back around to the initial point. "Snape hasn't given you a specific point up until which to keep him. What are you gonna do, call him 'the kid' for the first few weeks of his life?"

"Oh, stop it, Harry," Hermione said, cutting her eyes upward to look at him as she smirked; then, after another moment, she dropped her gaze and sighed. "I _have_ given thought to the matter of course; I just haven't gone to any official matters about it, for reasons already stated."

"Well go on then, 'Mione," Robere said from the corner where he sat, a half-grin on his face as he continued on with his ingredients. "It won't hurt anything for you to tell _us_ anyway – what would you name this boy?"

"Eh, _well_ . . . " she said, smiling down at the infant as he half-opened his sleepy, grey-colored eyes up at her, his little mouth forming a small 'o' as he made a gentle cooing type sound. "I was thinking to myself for the past couple days that I do like the sound of the name . . . Faolan. What do you think, Harry?"

"Fao_lan_ . . ." Harry repeated back, his hand now resting atop Hermione's as it itself was placed over the baby's soft stomach. "I think it fits him very well. What do you think, Mr. Granger?"

"Faolan's a fine name – a fine name, indeed. You've got a way with names, Hermione, just like your mother did."

Harry felt Hermione's shoulders tense up a bit when her father said this, and as he could easily recall what had happened just one week beforehand when the man had been reminded of his dearly departed Margot, he didn't have to guess why. However, as he and Hermione both glanced over to the apothecary, they saw him smiling back at them both. There was no sign of disturbance or abnormality about him at all as he went along with his work. They were grateful, glad and happy to see this, even if they weren't sure why he was so much calmer now.

Robere knew for himself what the reasoning was, though.

It had all been an instance of perchance. Clearly within his minds' eye he watched as his apprentice stepped out through the front door of the Bones' household, saying in a tired but grateful voice, "She'll be fine after some . . . _rest_ . . ." and it was with even further clarity that Robere recalled the sharp turn that said apprentice's eye took when he caught sight of Hermione holding the crying newborn of the woman he and Neville Longbottom had just saved the life of.

"_What happened to your finger there, girl – the one that the infant child just pulled his mouth away from?"_

**. . . . . . . .**

"Robere . . . might I pull you aside?" Severus had said in a quite urgent voice, not a moment after Hermione's words had said rather nonchalantly, _"I'd pricked it on a thorn bush. The baby must've gotten a taste of it but, surely, that's alright?"_

While Robere had assured his daughter that of course no harm had been done, his apprentice was pulling him away quite quickly by the wrist, further and further away, until they were heading down the lane that would ultimately lead to Robere's own house itself.

"Why, what's gotten into you, Severus?" he asked the bizarrely behaving man, though no answer would be given to him, not until they were well within the house itself, sat across from one another at a small, circular table therein.

"_Severus_, what on Earth is –" Robere had begun to ask again, only to be interrupted by Snape speaking to him in a rather matter-of-fact sort of voice.

"That babe – the newborn – your daughter will have to be the one to mother and nurse it for the future time being, Robere."

"But, but _why_? And, and _how_? Severus, I was only being half-serious with my absinthe-addled mind remark before but come now, you haven't even kept up with giving her one on one time as promised, to help ease her mind, and now you wish to thrust her into parenthood with a child that's not hers? What's gotten into you, man?"

"Robere, I am being all too serious," Severus said in a grave voice, bringing a forefinger and thumb to pinch at the bridge of his overly long nose, evidently suffering from a bit of a headache. "Would you mind setting on a kettle for tea?"

"I didn't know you cared for tea, Severus."

"I don't so much. _You'll_ want a cup or two, though, Robere. I'm going to go against every instinct and previously foregathered intent this day and do something that I was never supposed to do; I'll be spilling unto you a secret that I was sworn to keep until my dying breath and – I daresay – I'll be at least half-fulfilling such a promise, should all go as planned . . ."

"Oh, forget the kettle; forget the tea, enough with the _nonsense_ – just, whatever it is, out with it, Severus. Out with it."

Slowly lifting his gaze to look back at the apothecary as he stared back at him, Snape hesitated for a good, rather long moment. "You must first and foremost recall the fact that your Margot had cut her own skin while fixing ingredients, Robere. If you don't recall this, you won't recall the rest of the importance quite quickly enough as it comes to you."

Furrowing his brow, the age-lined face of Robere Granger sagged a bit, and then the man sighed, before shaking his head and saying, "Do you mean the time she cut it just shy of Harry Potter being born, and just shy, thereafter, of Hermione herself being born, Severus?"

"I do."

"Right . . . whatever that has to do with, well, _whatever else_ . . . I recall it having happened, Severus."

"Good . . . good. Then it can begin. My utmost final and – most importantly – most urgent confession of all may now begin," Snape said, sounding at once both tired and yet strangely eager to get whatever he held within himself off of his chest.

Shortly across town, sitting inside his house near the hearth with his Gran and with Luna, Neville Longbottom kept his eyes idly watchful of the flickering flames before himself as the snow indeed began to fall outside at long last. ". . . Gran?" he said.

"Yes, m'boy?" the older woman replied, wrapping a shawl about herself tightly as she rocked back and forth in her wooden rocker quietly, sight kept between both her grandson and his lovely young tag-a-long friend.

"You knew that wretched, sad story about Mrs. Granger just now . . ." Neville answered her quietly. "And . . . you've told me countless other stories before. I dare not harass you, Gran, with question upon question, but one thing did come up between me and Luna earlier this very morning and, if you're up to explaining it, would you mind elaborating on how it is you know that Remus Lupin fled from the Potter house the night that Lily bore Harry? Could you, could you tell us _why_ he fled . . . after all, something just tells me, Gran, that you know more than you just happened to ever tell me about it."

"Aye . . ." the older woman said, biting down hard on her bottom lip as she continued to rock back and forth for a moment, seeming to meditate on the matter for a moment before finally hanging her head a bit and sighing. "You've got me there, Neville. I _do_ know much more about that fateful night. 'Fact is, I've played one half of two parts of a secret keeper to the full truth of that night for a long, long while, and for good reason, too."

"Well . . . if you really don't want to divulge this secret, Gran, then I'll understand," Neville said at first, before hesitating and adding. "But . . . if you _do_ so choose to? Well, your secret will be kept with me to the grave, Gran."

"As it would with me, as well," Luna was quick to say, though in a sincere fashion, one that was queer in its ability to be so instantly believed as gospel truth by both grandmother and grandson without a second thought.

Sighing again, even more heavily, Ms. Longbottom slowed her rocking to a stop and said, "It began by pure, unadulterated accident, ye see? Poor old Remus Lupin . . . poor _young_ Remus Lupin, I shoul' say. A war hero, but tired and weary and broken-hearted over loss of his good friend James, he meandered right off his path from the warzone while on his way back to break news to Lily. He never _intended_ to pass by Melltith Olau Leuad. He never intended to be bitten, or to wander in a lost way an extra few days out in the wilderness before finally reaching Lily, either. In any account, he definitely didn't intend on reaching her on a night when a full moon was shining above in the sky . . ."

Back within the Granger house, Snape was partially leant across the table, one hand grasping slightly at the table top. "Well you know how it was back then – how it still is with me and these townsfolk, Robere. I came back and they acted as if I'd brought the war along with me; never even mind the fact that I gave the elder brothers fair warning _of_ said approaching war, no – no, I was evil incarnate for having moved away. Only you and Margot, you wonderful people – you both and Lily and the aforementioned _Elders_ – that was it. You let me in as a second apprentice to you. Your wife accepted me without question . . . well, that night was like any other night, you know? Or, it was meant to be. I had ever intent already to go and check on Lily. She was heavily pregnant, all alone, with her bastard husband far away on the war front . . ."

At this, Snape's voice drifted off a bit, and then he shook his head, before continuing on. "I heard her cry out at some point that evening, and ran over quick as I could. I found her covered in blood. Not normal, because she was in labor, blood – abnormal, coming from the _neck_ blood, Robere. You . . . you were off in the forest, collecting ingredients. Margot was back in the cabin. She heard the outcries, too, of course. I told her no, to stay, that I was going to go check on Lily like normal _anyway_. So mind her own pregnancy, keep her own self safe and away from stress. Whatever the reason, I found myself alone in this room, clinging onto my beautiful, darling Lily, begging her to tell me why this has happened. I know why her child is coming, but why is her neck bleeding? Who's attacked her? So many questions."

"Was she able to, to tell you anything, Severus?" Robere asked, now indeed getting up from the table and moving over to the stove to put on a kettle for tea.

"Remus . . . Lupin," Snape snarled, now rapping his fingernails along the tabletop in a sinister fashion. "She told me how he came in, partially foaming at the lips, eyes yellowing and rolling, feverish – oh her James is dead, he is able to tell her, though otherwise, he looks oh so _sick_."

Near the stove, Robere had frozen in place, holding the water-filled kettle to the stove motionlessly.

"Lily tells me, tells me how, _despite being in labor for a bit already_ that she wanted to go ahead and try to tend to whatever was wrong with _him_. There was a full moon in the sky that night, Robere. You get one guess as to what was _afflicting_ poor, dear _REMUS_."

Flinching a bit at the tone that now happened to afflict Severus's voice, Robere slowly but surely managed to continue on with the tea making. "Werewolfism," he said quietly.

"Lily begged me to make her two promises, you see. One was that I was to never tell a soul that it was a werewolf that had bitten her. Think of what they'd do with her poor baby once he was born, after all. The second promise I took less seriously, though I did keep it for many, many years. So many dreams of dead birds all my own these promises brought me, just like her nightmares born of her guilt from having kissed me on the very night I returned home after getting her ribbon-tied letter – right on the lips – just like it should've been forever and a day instead of those kisses _James – Potter _stole from us all that time . . . but I, I digress, Robere."

"It's perfectly alright, Severus," the apothecary said in a somewhat startled and uncertain voice, now as he tipped tea from a tin into the kettle of boiling water.

"I gave her one last kiss that night and I tore off into the woods myself. I searched high and low for Monkshood and Agrimony. Stop the Werewolfism – stop the bleeding – save my Lily. Those three things were my sole mantra in both head and heart as I searched in the moonlight. Oh, how I searched, in vain and for what felt like forever, I searched . . ."

Back within the Longbottom household, Neville's Gran was tilted forward so much so in her chair that she looked quite likely to fall out, whilst Neville himself held onto Luna's small hand as they listened intently to the story that she continued to tell them both.

"I hobbled my way into the little house. There was blood everywhere . . . Margot Granger, as ready to drop her own baby as she was, she was there, too, you know, having heard the scream from Lily. The blood . . . it was coming from her neck . . . it didn't make any sense, but Margot wasn't asking questions. She was just preparing herself to help Lily have this baby, which Lily herself was bound and determined to do, be it the death of her or not, which . . . the poor darling knew it was going to be, of course."

"Oh my _Lord_ . . ." Luna whispered, clutching Neville's hand more tightly.

Nodding slowly, Gran reached a hand out and patted it over the both of Luna and Neville's. "It was heartbreakingly sad, yes, dears, it was. I heard her last words, those aside from what to name the baby, that is . . . now, se told this to Margot in a little more than a murmur but I heard the word though for myself, plain as day – _werewolf_. Well, here poor Margot was with a simple scratch or cut visible on her hand or wrist while she's delivering this child to the world, coming into contact with this contaminated blood, if poor Lily was to be believed, you see. Well, a couple days later, when Margot finally did have Hermione, this is where the story of Remus Lupin passing by Melltith Olau Leuad comes into play: he didn't just infect Lily Potter and her child with werewolfism. He infected Margot Granger and her unborn child with werewolfism, as well."

Gran paused at this, before hanging her head, removing her hand and adding, "Margot had Hermione so soon after Lily had Harry and passed on that she must've realized that she'd soon be turning. That's why, I believe, she went to the water and drowned herself, before the signs were too apparent. I'm sure she didn't tell Robere. I'm sure she didn't tell a soul. If they didn't know about _her _being a werewolf, then they wouldn't be trying to do away with her _child_. As for me knowing, well, Lily passed away and was buried quickly. The same was the case with Margot. Baby Harry was sent away at first with his godfather and baby Hermione didn't _seem_ strange. Why would I have said a word?"

Robere Granger sat down heavily on his chair in his house, his head in his hand as the kettle whistled on the stove, now long forgotten. "The werewolf – _no_ – the were_wolves_ – right here, under our noses, all this time, Severus? Our own Harry, my own _Hermione_? This – but – when we were talking to the Elder brothers just earlier this day, you were telling them you suspected _yourself_ of being the werewolf! I appreciate you more than words can say for not giving away my daughter, but why even say as much as you have, especially if it's a complete lie?"

"I said what I did to _save_ your daughter. And to save Lily's son. And if that newborn Bones' baby really has suckled Hermione's blood, then I'll need to save it, as well, but that's as far as I myself can go. It'll mean the end of my life as I know it here in Horthwarg, but you have Longbottom – he's a good apothecary . . . finally."

"Snape . . . what exactly are you trying to say to me here?" Robere asked; a strangely desperate look was in his eyes.

"I think you already know exactly what my plan is. I believe you know exactly why I'm off to visit Melltith Olau Leuad this evening, too. I believe you absolutely understand that the three of them will be having to go and _how_ and _why it has to be_, Robere," came Snape's simple, emotionless reply.

**. . . . . . . .**

This week later, and now that Harry and Hermione had returned their attention to the baby – little Faolan, he reminded himself – again, Robere felt safe enough to frown, sighing sadly as he placed his working tools down onto the table, letting his head hang downward. Maybe he _did_ understand exactly everything Snape had been saying one week beforehand.

It didn't mean that he _wanted to_, though.


	16. Chapter 16

"You're lying to me," Hermione said simply, even as she backed herself away into a corner within the oh so tiny place that Severus Snape called home.

"I wish I was," he said in a bit of a grave whisper, his eyes not meeting hers.

Her eyes widening just a bit – though only for the tiniest fraction of a second – the frazzled haired young woman balls her hands into fists at her sides and stomps a foot to the floor, hard. "You _have_ lost your mind. And to think you were meant to be giving me advice about how I reacted to Ron and to, to other things. Oh Father was right. First you get me alone, one on one and force me into the nightmare forest, and then you rattle on about birds and guilt after _supposedly_ finding Remus Lupin dead in the woods themselves. Then . . . you give little Faolan to me, expect me to nurse and raise him. I love that baby. But you'll doubtlessly be snatching him away now, am I right, _Snape_?"

Raising his eyebrows at the use of only his surname (for Miss Granger, of all his pupils, has only ever been the sole one to refrain from showing him disrespect in the past) Severus shakes his head a bit, saying, "On the contrary, you'll be taking him on as your very own son, Hermione."

Blinking, the brown-eyed girl turns her head to the side, feeling tears begin to sting at their corners even if she isn't precisely sure of the cause for it. "You . . . dragged me through eight feet of snow, made me leave Faolan with Harry and Father back home . . . you've got me held hostage here in your cottage, feeding me pure lies – I only have one question, sir: _why are you doing it_?"

Taking a few quick steps forward toward the girl, Severus stared her right in the eye and said, "I've never lied directly about Lily unless it was regarding a promise she _swore_ me to keep. I'm not lying on her honor now. So you're right about one thing – I _did_ kill Remus Lupin that night in the woods. After all . . . why, he killed my Lily, didn't he?"

Hermione said nothing, but merely balled her fists more tightly together as a tear slipped down her pale cheek.

"So I did lie about 'finding him dead' – I'm _not_ lying about him infecting my darling Lily and her unborn son with Werewolfism so, _so_ many years ago. I'm _not_ lying about your own mother contracting it, Hermione. You want to know who stole Ginny Weasley from her mother. Look in a mirror."

"_Liar_!" Hermione shouted at the top of her voice, raising a fist back, keeping it at the ready.

"And as for the night I myself snuffed out what little life Remus Lupin had left in him . . . take a closer look at your dear new lover, Miss Granger. Or, would you rather me to say it outright, how Harry crept into the woods, crazed, seeking Ron, seeking to make a kill of his own –"

Making close contact with the apothecary's upper lip in the form of an uppercut, Hermione then withdrew her fist and instead unfolded her hand to clasp it over her own mouth, watching as a swell of blood appeared there.

"You pack quite a punch, Miss Granger," was all that Severus said.

"You – you let me leave right this instant!" Hermione shouted, stomping her foot again as she lowered her hand. "You've gone off your rocker completely and I'll hear no more of it. Harry _loved_ Ron – they were best friends – why would he kill him, you crazy old drunken lunatic!"

"To keep you," Severus said simply, dryly, emotionlessly. "As is the same reason you killed Ronald's sister – to keep _Harry_ for yourself."

Snape's face turned harshly to the side as Hermione smacked him as hard as she could across his cheek, now with her open palm. Seeing he was stunned, she took her opportunity and made a run for the door. Snape, however, was far too quick and he grabbed her by the wrists and pinned her back against the wall, even as she struggled and said most un-ladylike things to him, her wide eyes brimmed with tears.

"I'll let you leave as soon as you digest and accept the full truth," he said to her in a rather stern tone.

"Go to Hell," she hissed in return.

"Oh, believe you, me, Miss Granger," Snape said at once, not missing a beat as he kept her pinned to the wall. "I've been _living_ in Hell ever since Lily drew her last breath on this Earth. Find a new place to banish me to, will you?"

**. . . . . . . .**

_**One - hour – earlier**_

_**. . . . . . . .**_

"Goodness, Snape, you must be frozen to death by now!" Robere exclaimed as he welcomed a doubly-robed and (on top of that) thickly cloaked and snow-covered Severus into his home; not waiting for reply, he dropped his voice to a whisper then and added, "Did you make way with the trip?"

Giving a curt nod in reply, Snape mumbled, "It went twenty times better than even I'd anticipated it might. It's the smell – they trust the smell. I know the smell and, Robere, they have it. They'll be golden there, treated so _well_."

"That's . . . well, it is good to know . . ." the apothecary replied, though his tired and aging face fell all the same, an indescribable sadness in his eyes as he hung his head.

"It's perfect," Snape corrected him, before glancing over to the corner of the one room home only to find that a tired looking Hermione was nestling a swaddled baby boy up on her bed, fixing him securely between the wall of the room and a line of pillows. "How is she, anyway?"

"Tired, a bit paranoid and overprotective of Faolan – just like any new . . . mother would be," Robere answered, finding it strange to get use to the idea of his unmarried, unblemished daughter actually being such a thing as a mother already.

"Faolan?" Snape repeated back blankly, before nodding and saying, "So she's taken to naming him even?"

"That she has."

"Honestly, this is playing out like a destined hand of cards, is it not, Robere?" Snape asked, though before he could get an answer the front door was opened, revealing Harry, who happened to have an armful of firewood along with him.

"Oh, hullo," he says, nodding his head in the direction of Snape and Mister Granger, before hurriedly making his way over to the firewood box near the hearth, shivering from the cold outside, his very hair full of fallen snow. "It's a complete ice box outside."

"Oh, I'm sorry you had to go out in it," Hermione said sympathetically, covering up the sleeping Faolan gently before hurrying her way over to Harry, grasping both his hands within her own to rub his fingers and warm them up for him.

"Robere," Snape said after a moment's pause. "Perhaps I should go ahead and get underway with letting these two in on the findings of my little trip that I began a week ago?"

Robere was weary, nervous, frightened – the very epitome of apprehension. He wrung his hands together nervously and began to pace around the room a bit.

"Which trip?" Harry asked blankly, his hands still being held by Hermione's.

"As of this moment, you see, I am officially no longer a resident of Horthwarg," Snape said rather bluntly, confusing the young couple entirely.

"What are you –" Harry began, but Snape cut him off, saying:

"Last week I told the brothers' Dumbledore that I'd be leaving for Melltith Olau Leuad at once."

"Well why would you do _that_?" Hermione asked, slowly releasing Harry's hands to instead begin brushing the snow from his hair and the shoulders of his coat. "That's the werewolf village, yes?"

"Yes," Snape replied, folding his hands together before himself. "I told them that I'd be doing so because I decided that _I _was the wretched werewolf that had been responsible for the terrorization this past full moon."

Growing wide-eyed, Harry disregarded Hermione at once to instead step up to his apothecary teacher, getting right up in his face. "So it was you who took Ron and Ginny and the others, was it?" he spat angrily, his eyes blazing with instantaneous rage.

"Now _hold on, Harry_," Robere said, quickly intervening by sidling over to place himself partially between Snape and Harry. "Listen to the rest of his explanation . . . please, Harry?"

His shoulders still rising and falling with adrenaline, anger and mild confusion, Harry gave Robere a nod and backed off just a bit, saying to Snape, "Well out with it then – give me a good reason not to crush your _throat_ right here and right now for killing my best mate."

"Listen, _Potter_," Snape said with a bit of a snarl, and even if Robere found it a bit uncalled for he also remembered a teenager Severus speaking in such a manner to James Potter, rather than Harry, who, admittedly, was the spitting image of James with the sole exception of his eyes.

"Watch your tone with me, old man," Harry hissed back.

"I'll watch my tone when you bite your tongue, Potter," Snape replied as he raised an eyebrow. "After all, I will need your full, undivided, non-interrupted attention shortly."

Feeling a last moment urge to retreat from the situation jerk somewhere near his navel, Robere said aloud in a desperate sort of voice, "S-Severus . . . is now _really_ the best time?"

"If not now, then never. Think of the next full moon and what could happen. I know she is your only family but think with your head and not your heart, for both Hermione's and Potter's sake here."

"What do you mean 'think of the full moon'?" Hermione asked from where she stood by the fireplace.

"What do Hermione and I suddenly have to do with anything anyway?" Harry added.

"Silence," Severus said to them; once he felt he could trust the hold of their attention better he added, "I can see that you are full of objections and interjections and therefore I can see no true alternative to taking a swift approach to this entire situation, an even swifter one than I'd readied myself for."

"But _Severus_ . . ." Robere said, a weak and pleading tone in his voice.

"Robere, I have prepared for you a tonic to ease those nerves of yours," Snape said then. "I'd hoped I'd need not administer it." Snape then slipped a corked vial from a pocket within his cloak, offering it outward to the apothecary. "However it appears to be all too necessary after all."

Taking the vial without further comment or question, the apothecary removed the cork with a quick tug before downing the elixir within it in one go.

"You're a good man, Robere," Severus said in a somber tone, before returning his attention to Harry. "You need to relax your mind, Potter. Right now . . . just close your eyes, just –"

"Snape, I don't see why –" he began to protest.

Leaning forward, Snape placed his still-gloved hand on Harry's shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze as he rested his chin near the young man's ear to whisper something to him. It was a long, on-going streaming hiss of something that Hermione couldn't make out at all whatsoever. Several times throughout this happening Harry acted as if he might pull away from the whispering man, clearly not reacting too kindly to whatever was being said to him.

However, after a full five minutes, Severus finally let go of his grip on the shoulder and watched as Harry silently stumbled backward away from him, a look of horror in his eyes as the back of his legs found the edge of a chair, prompting him to sit down upon it.

Reaching a somewhat trembling hand outward to grasp at nothing in particular as he spoke in a very quiet voice, Harry said, "Hermione? Hermione . . ."

"Harry?" she replied as she reached a hand forward to take hold of his own outstretched one; she felt frightened, scared to death upon hearing the wounded, unnaturally sorrowful way in which he said her name.

Watching him slowly turn his face to look up at her, she quietly gasped, her mouth becoming agape as she caught sight of the tears now glistening across his eyes. "Hermione, I'm so sorry, but . . . I have to, to tell you –"

"Tell me what?" she replied in a whisper at once, dropping to her knees beside his chair, his hand still clasped tightly now within both of her own.

"It's me. I – I'm the one who killed Ron. I . . . took him away from us and, and my _God_, I'm just so, so so sorry, H-Hermione." Tears dripping from his face now in large, unapologetic drops, Hermione let go of Harry's hand to instead move a hand to his face, cupping his cheek.

"I've no idea what Severus just said to you," she told him in a quiet, gentle voice. "But that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You didn't – you'd _never_ –"

"And Lavender," Harry murmured. "Hermione . . . I killed her, too."

"Harry, _stop it_," Hermione scolded him, furrowing her brow. "Mister Snape, _sir_, what have you gone and done to him?"

"I've told him the truth, Miss Granger," Severus said simply.

"Oh _get out_ – you were once such an intelligent and respectable man, sir. I admired you. But, but now you've gone too far, spreading lies like poison and for no good reason, either." Turning to search for her father within the home, she then said, "Father, make him get out!"

Hermione finally did spot her father, who was now sitting on the edge of his bed in the corner of the room. "Father? _Father_!"

"I'm alright, darling little Hermione," he said to her, leaning over to the side to lie his head down on his pillow. "I just need a little shut-eye now . . ."

"But – your words are slurred even – Father, what's -? Oh, oh _you_ gave him a sleeping elixir!" Hermione let her hand fall from Harry's face as she stood up then, turning to look Snape right in the eye.

"You don't understand, Hermione," Harry said to her though, as he remained sat there solemnly on the chair. "I know I did it."

"Harry, stop it!" Hermione snapped, tears in her eyes as she marched up closer to Snape. "You gave my father a sleeping elixir and then you tried to convince Harry he is guilty of crimes he certainly didn't commit. Why are you _doing_ all this? I mean, Harry doesn't – he didn't even have a _motive_ in any of this!"

Standing up then, Harry reached out and placed both his hands atop Hermione's shoulders, squeezing there. "Lavender wanted Ron," he whispered. "I killed her so she wouldn't come between you two."

A shiver ran up Hermione's spine, then back down again.

"Ron was hard to kill. I was torn. My best friends . . . you and Ron . . . the crazed feeling took over and made it so much more clear. Ron wanted you, I wanted you – Ron was messing it up, hurting you more, driving you mad, Hermione . . ."

"Harry . . ."

"I did it to keep you, safe and sound and whole. Normally I'd have never, but I remember now . . . I remember seeing the moon in the sky, feeling like my heart was swelling, fit to burst. Tears would leak from my eyes, I'd grow sick, double-over, black out. I suppose I had some sense of awareness about me. I didn't attack you that night I attacked Lavender, leading to her death. You struck me with a rock but I resisted. I could sense it was you . . ."

"I struck a wolf with a rock, Harry . . ." Hermione replied faintly.

His mouth now hovering behind the nape of her neck, Harry murmured, "Exactly. I am the wolf."

Feeling herself pale, Hermione took a few steps forward away from him, before giving a faint shriek and losing consciousness, falling nearly to the floor except Severus Snape managed to swoop down and catch her in his arms before she quite got the chance to make contact.

"Harry, you'll be okay to watch over Faolan?" he asked, lifting Hermione up in his arms and he stood up straighter.

"Yes, of course," the disassociated young man answered at once, bringing a hand to the back of his hair as he murmured to himself. ". . . I left the woods after the rock hit me . . ."

Severus left the house then without comment to this, pushing to close the door behind him with his boot.

". . . I made it all the way to the house and called Ron outside to talk. Nothing felt any different. But now I remember . . ." Still touching the back of his head, Harry gave a slight wince as his fingers moved over a certain spot. ". . . It's still kind of sore even to this day, where the rock hit me. . ."

**. . . . . . . .**

_**Present – time**_

_**. . . . . . . .**_

Hermione looked back at Snape as he kept her wrists pinned behind her, against the wall, a softer, more accepting look in her eyes now. "Sir . . . if you let me go, I'll listen. I'll sit down and listen," she said, looking defeated.

"I . . . well alright then, Miss Granger. Thank you," Severus replied, releasing her wrists to turn and pull out a chair for her.

Lowering her arms to her sides, Hermione eyed the apothecary apprentice for a fraction of a second to make sure his back was still turned. It was. Taking her second chance, she bolted for the front door and flung it open as if her life depended on it. Jumping over the threshold and landing on her side in the half-frozen snow, she soon scrambled to get back up again, for she could glimpse back to see Severus running for already. Emitting an ear piercing scream, she soon found her hand being held and pulled upward – by Neville Longbottom.

"N-Neville?" she asked as he helped her to her feet, before lifting her up in his arms from the snow.

"Don't worry. I came to get you at your home. My Gran, she wanted to confess something to you that she thought you ought to know at long last after all these years. I heard screaming and struggle instead when I got here."

"It's Snape!" Hermione exclaimed, pointing back at him as he now stood just outside his house, looking back to Neville. "He's gone mad, saying such crazy things . . ."

"Before we judge his sanity . . ." Neville said quietly. "Just, just come and have a word with my Gran. We won't make you feel uncomfortable, promise. And besides, Luna's there as well, Hermione."

"Thank you, Neville, for helping me to get away, if nothing else," the brown-eyed girl said kindly, hanging her arms around his neck.

"Don't thank me yet," he murmured, as he looked away from Snape and turned direction in the snow, marching through it to reach his home. "You haven't heard Gran's story yet."


End file.
